I

THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIESEDITED BY

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE

EDWIN BOOTHBY

CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND

Digitized by tine Internet Archive

in 2007 witii funding from

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THE

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EDWIN BOOTH

CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND7/

BOSTONSMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

MDCCCCI

Copyright^ I^OI

By Small^ Maynard ^ Company{Incorporated)

Entered at Stationers^ Hall

a

Press of

George H, Ellis^ Boston

The photogravure used as a frontispiece

to this volume is from a copy of a photo-

graph taken in 1890 hy Mr. Ignatius Gross-

mann, BootWs son-in-law. Booth sent this

copy to Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, with

a letter from which the following words,

giving his own opinion of the likeness, are

taken

:

'Hhe whole thing, [the Sargent portrait]

even the long thin legs <^ graceless trousers

are me & mine. I have a photograph

for you whose expression is very similar, &wh. I consider the best of me ever made :

it was done by chance by Grossmann one

day last Summer, at the Pier ; I liked it

so well that he had it enlarged <& finished

properly & I had a few for my friends

struck off. The absence of theatrical effect

&c, is its great merit S that is what pleases

me in Sargent^ s portrait.

'^ Lovefor you all, God bless you." ED WINr

The present engraving is by John Andrew

& Son, Boston.

4r\r\r-^r^r^/r^

IN MEMOKIAM D. B.

PEEFACB.

Without Mr. William Winter^s full and

authoritative ''Life and Art of Edwin

Boothj^^ this hook could not have been writ-

ten. It owes less yet much to " The Elder

and the Younger Booth,^^ by the late Mrs.

J. S. Clarice; and to ''Edwin Booth:

Eecollections by his Daughter, Edwina

Booth Grossmann ; and Letters to her and

to his Friends.^

^

The writer is greatly indebted to Mr.

Aldrich for permission to print hitherto

unpublished letters of Booth, and for the

loan of the rare photograph reproduced as

frontispiece.

The writer is obliged to Messrs. Hough-

ton, Mifflin & Co., and to Mr. Aldrich, for

permission to reprint the poem entitled

"8argenfs Portrait of Edwin Booth at

'The Players.'' ^^

0. T. C.

Cambbidgb, 8 Noyember, 1901.

CHEOKOLOGY.

1833

November 13. Edwin Booth was born at

Belair, Maryland.

1849

First appearance on the stage, at Boston

Museum.1851

Acted Eiehard III for the first time.

1852

Went to California with his father. His

father died.

1854

Visited Australia, Samoan and Sand-

wich Islands.

1857

April 20. Appeared at Boston Theatre

as Sir Giles Overreach.

1860

July 7. Married Miss Mary Devlin and

sailed soon afterwards for England.

1861

September. First appearance in London,

as Shylock,

xii CHEONOLOGY1861 (continued)

December 9. Edwina Booth born at Pul-

ham^ London.1862

September 29. Eeappearance in NewYork.

1863

February 21. Death, of Mary Devlin

Booth.

September 21. Took management of Win-ter Grarden Theatre, "New York.

1864

November 25. Produced ^^ Julins Caesar''

at Winter Garden Theatre ; Junius, Ed-

win, and John Wilkes Booth in cast.

November 26. Produced ^^ Hamlet'' at

Winter Garden Theatre.

1865

March 22. One hundredth night of

^* Hamlet" at Winter Garden Theatre.

April 14. Lincoln assassinated by JohnWilkes Booth.

Eetired from the stage.

CHEONOLOGY xiii

1866

January 3. Eeappeared at Winter Gar-

den Theatre, as Hamlet,

1867

January 22. Presentation of HamletMedal.

January 28. Eevival of ^^The Merchantof Venice '* at Winter Garden Theatre.

March 22-23. Winter Garden Theatre

destroyed by fire.

1868

April 8. Corner-stone of Booth's The-

atre, [N'ew York, laid.

November 3. Appeared in ^^ Macbeth/'

Boston Theatre, with Mme. Janauschek.

1869

February 3. Booth's Theatre openedwith ^^Eomeo and Juliet."

April 12. Produced ^^OtheUo."

June 7. Married Miss Mary P. M^-

Yicker of Chicago.

1871

December 25. Produced ^^ Julius Caesar"

at Booth's Theatre.

xiv CHEOKOLOGY1873

Eetired from management.

1874

Went into bankruptcy.

1875

March, Eeleased from bankruptcy.

Thrown from carriage at Cos-Cob, Con-

necticut ; seriously injured.

October 25. Eeappeared in IsTew York, at

Fifth Avenue Theatre.

1876

January S-March 3. Successful tour of

southern states. Eevisited California.

November 20. Began long engagement in

New York.1877-78

Fifteen volumes of Prompt-BooJcs (Will-

iam Winter, editor) published.

1879

April 23. Mark Gray's attempt to assas-

sinate Booth, at Chicago.

1880

April, Appeared as Fetruchio, Madison

CHEOI^OLOGY xv

Square Theatre, ^ew York, for benefit

of Poe Memorial.

June 15. Booth festival at Delmonico^s.

June 30. Sailed for England.

November 6. Appeared at Princess's The-

atre, London, as Samlet.

1881

Presented ^'King Lear.''

March 29. Ended season at Princess's

Theatre, London.

May 2. Appeared at Lyceum Theatre,

London, as Othello, Henry Irving lago.

October 3. Eeappeared in New York,

Booth's Theatre.

November 13. Death of Mary M'VickerBooth.

1882

May 31. Sailed for England.

June 25. Eeappeared at Princess's The-

atre, London.1883

January 11. Appeared at Berlin.

Tour of Germany.April 7. Closed tour at Vienna. Ee-

turned to America.

xvi CHEOl^OLOGY1885

May 4t. Delivered address at dedication

of Poe Memorial, Metropolitan Museum,iN'ew York.

May 7. Appeared in ^^ Macbeth'' witli

Mme. Eistori at Academy of Music,

I^ew York.1886

April 27-30 and May 1. Appeared in

^^ Hamlet'' and ^^ Othello" with Salvini

at Academy of Music, I^ew York.

Booth-Barrett combination formed.

1887

Delivered address at dedication of Ac-

tors' Monument, Long Island.

1888

May 21. Appeared as Hamlet at testimo-

nial benefit for Lester Wallack, Metro-

politan Opera House, Kew York.

December 31. Founded The Players.

1889

Mme. Modjeska joined the Booth-Bar-

rett Company.

CHEO:NOLOaY xvii

1889 (^continued)

April 3. Had a light stroke of paralysis

at Eochester, ^New York.

1891

March 20. Death of Lawrence Barrett.

April 4. Last appearance on the stage,

as JEamlet1893

June 7. Edwin Booth died at The Play-

ers^ IsTew York City.

EDWIN BOOTH

I

EDWIN BOOTH.

Jumus Brutus Booth, known for

many years in this country as ^Hhe elder

Booth/ ^ was born on the first day of

May, 1796, in the parish of St. Pancras,

London. Through his grandmother,

Elizabeth Wilkes, he was related to the

famous John Wilke?i,-, aaid, through iiiis

mother he came of a W^lish family namedLlewellyn. Thu^s bqfeji 'the eldei* ian4 .til^e/;

younger Booth had in tliem that strain

of Celtic blood so often found in English

actors, artists, and writers. '' The Booths

and Wilkes of Clerkenwell," writes Mrs.

J. S. Clarke in her memoir of her father,

^^ were honourably known in their time;

the house of Bishop Burnet, an historical

old building, was the birthplace of manyof the Booths, and the yard of the an-

cient church of St. John of Jerusalem

still contains the gravestones of their de-

scendants, on which the names of the

2 EDWm BOOTHtwo families are frequently intermingled.

Euin and demolition have been busy,

the black mould of years is over the nar-

row streets and by-ways ; but the little

court keeps its name of ^ Booth/ and the

graves in the narrow slip of church-

ground seem likely to last till dooms-

day. ''

Eichard, the father of J. B. Booth,

was educated for the law ; but his devo-

tion to a profession more firmly attached

Vc i6 })te^dsB:b : thaw any other— except

perhaps that of his son and grandsons—was not enough to keep him from be-

coming a red Eepublican and resolving

to fight for England's American colonies

against the mother-country. After be-

ing taken prisoner and brought back to

England, Booth addressed himself to

study, and the practice of law. Al-

though he seems not to have been

punished for his disloyalty, a freely

proclaimed republicanism kept him un-

popular. Eichard Booth's rule that

EDWIN BOOTH 3

everyone who entered his Bloomsbury

drawing-room should bow before a por-

trait of Washington that hung there,

was probably the most whimsical mani-

festation of his principles. Clearly in-

dicative of these were also the names of

his two sons, Junius Brutus and Alger-

non Sidney.

After a brief rivalry with Kean, J. B.

Booth came to try his fortune in the newworld, where he was long and widely

known for his great genius and even

greater eccentricity. On the eighteenth

of January, 1821, he had married MaryAnne Holmes, and the same year found

them at Norfolk, Virginia. The young

actor's gifts and oddities were combined

with a strong desire for a quiet country

life when he was not acting. So, after

a number of brilliant engagements, in

the summer of 1822 he bought a farm

in Harford County, Maryland, twenty-

five miles from Baltimore. He passed

much time there, and there his six sons

and four daughters were born.

4 EDWIN BOOTHKnown always as ^^The Farm,'' tMs

estate was really a wood, tliree miles

from eacli of tliree small villages— Bel-

air, Hickory, and Churchville. Over

the stony coacli-road, tkrough an arch of

great trees, the post-boy, with his horn

and mail-bags, used to ride once a week,

and toss the Booths' letters and papers

over their gate. The house was a quar-

ter of a mile from the gate, by a narrow,

crooked path. The house, it should be

said, was no more than a log-cabin, as

innocent of locks and bolts as if it hadbeen in Arcadia. The square window-

frames and broad shutters of the cabin—which was plastered and whitewashedon

the outside— were painted red. ^ ^ Four

rooms besides the loffc, the kitchen, and

the Old Dominion chimney, made upa picturesque and comfortable abode,

standing in a clearing encompassed byhuge oak, black walnut, beech, and tu-

lip trees." Booth caused his cabin to be

removed across several fields, in order to

EDWm BOOTH 6

bring it near an excellent spring whicli

he had discovered under the thickest

trees. These were left standing, and the

spring was furnished with granite ledges

and steps. ^^ In its grateful depths/'

continues Mrs. Clarke, ^^ dwelt an im-

mense green bull-frog ; and as these creat-

ures are said to live a hundred years,

the children of the family used to imag-

ine that he had croaked to the first

invaders of his solitude as he did to

them. In this shaded spot a little dairy

was built, and the thoughtful possessor

planted in front of his door a cherry-

shoot, anticipating the future whenhis children should gather under its

branches. Those days came in their

time, and his tall sons swung themselves

up among its great boughs, to read or

doze away many a sultry afternoon.

Merry groups gossiped under its shelter,

little ones danced there, while older ones

dreamed, and reared airy castles ; the

aged mother in her widowhood remem-

6 EDWIK BOOTHbered happier days in its shadows ; and

every year the orioles and mocking-birds

paid their welcome visits. This grand

old grafted tree was very tall and

straight, and shaded the entire lawn.''

In his green clearing, circled by un-

broken forest as far as the eye could

reach, the Farmer— the world forget-

ting, though not by the world forgot—planted a large orchard, and had negro

quarters, barns, and stables, built.

Among other necessities added to the

Farm, were a vineyard, a cider-press,

and a fishing stream : among its luxuries

was a swimming-pond, with a little

willow-grown island.

In a few years, when it became neces-

sary to provide for the dead as well as

for the living, a little graveyard was

railed in. With true Southern refusal

tojoin in death those who in life were so

far asunder. Booth buried black mem-bers of his large household outside of

the enclosure, which was shaded with

EDWm BOOTH 7

Jewish althea bushes, yews, and weeping

willows. The white dead were laid with-

in the rails. As clergymen were usually

no nearer than the rest of civilisation,

the owner of all this seclusion often found

it a part of his duty to read the burial

service.

Within the cabin the master of it

typified his two fold life by keeping in

one file the numbers of a weekly paper

on farming, and in another, playbills.

Incidents and pleasures of the farm life

he minutely described in a note-book,

along with passages from plays, memo-randa of dresses and properties, stage

directions, births and deaths of children,

astronomical observations, fast days, andlastly a few verses.

On the Actor-Farmer's few but catho-

lic book-shelves, stood volumes of Shel-

ley, Coleridge, and Keats— new poets

then— a Gazetteer of the World, an

English and a French dictionary, Ea-

cine, Alfieri, Tasso, Dante, Burton's An-

8 EDWm BOOTHatomy of Melancholy^ Plutarch's Morals

and lAves^ Milton, Shakespeare, the

Koran (by which the elder Booth set

great store), Locke's Essay on the SumanUnderstanding

Jand Paley's Theology.

On the parlour walls hung three en-

gravings— ^ ^ Timon of Athens, '' ^ ^ The

Eoman Matron showing her Husbandhow to Die/' and ^^The Death of Bona-

parte," ^^with these words written in

the clouds, ^T^te d'Armee.' " Thefurniture of the cabin, though simple

and rough, was of a sort that is looked

upon with increasing interest and affec-

tion. The corner cupboard, full of old-

fashioned china ; a narrow looking-

glass, with the sun and moon (in the

guise of human faces) painted on the

upper half; the spinning wheel j the

tall brass andirons and fender— all

these objects, even without the particu-

lar association, would be cherished as

household reminders of former times.

The old Herbalist and Almanack, side

EDWm BOOTH 9

by side on the wall, the ink-horn, bunchof quills, and little bags of seeds, hungfrom hooks round the looking-glass,

added harmonious details to a picture

strangely contrasted with the scenes in

which the world thinks of the elder and

the younger Booth. The family bread

was baked in a Dutch oven, the family

meals eaten from immense pewter plat-

ters, which were used in later days as

covers to the milk-crocks in the dairy.

A rigid vegetarianism was practised onthe Farm. ' ^ Mr. Booth usually travelled

from Harford County to Baltimore and

to Eichmond in his carryall with twohorses— ^ Captain,^ a very large animal,

and the favourite but diminutive ' Pea-

cock,' '' a piebald pony bought on the

island of Madeira.

It has seemed worth while to recite all

these details ofEdwin Booth's first home,

not only for their interest, but because

they were so very different from every-

thing in and about his last home, the

10 EDWIN BOOTHPlayers' Club in New York. Between

the two, we have only the most general

record of any of his abodes.

A word or two as to the physical

aspect of father and son will be a further

help to most readers. The father was

short, spare, and sinewy. He had the

head of a Greek, the chest of an athlete,

and a face of the pallor often though not

always seen in scholars. His hair was

dark, and his eyes blue-grey. His voice

ranged from organ to flute. Mr. Joseph

Jefferson's brief description of his acting,

to be found in the Autobiography, is worth

most ofthe many others scattered through

books of reminiscence and criticism.

^^When but twenty-two years of age,''

says Mr. Jefferson, ^^I was cast for

Marrall in ^A New Way to Pay Old

Debts,' the elder Booth playing Sir Giles

Overreach, . . . The elder Booth's act-

ing of Sir Giles was indeed something to

be remembered. During the last scene

he beats Marrall, who hides for protec-

EDWUsT BOOTH 11

tion behind Lord LoveJl, Booth's face,

when he found he could not reach his

victim, had the look of an uncaged tiger.

His eyes flashed and seemed to snap with

fire ; his nostrils dilated ; his cheeks

appeared to quiver ; his half-opened

mouth, with its thin lips pressed tightly

against the white teeth, made a picture

of anger fearful to look upon. At the

point where he is about to draw his

sword his arm shakes, his right handrefuses to do its ofi&ce, and, stricken with

paralysis, he stands the embodiment of

despair ; then come his terrible words of

anguish and self-reproach

:

^ Some undone widow sits upon mine arm,my sword.

Glued to my scabbard, with wrongedorphans' tears.'

His whole frame, shaken with convul-

sions, seems to collapse, his head sinks

upon his breast, his jaw drops, and the

cruel man is dead. There was no ap-

12 EDWIN BOOTHplause the niglit I speak of ; the acting

was so intense and so natural that the

mimic scenes seemed really to have hap-

pened. '' We have all sat through scenes

followed by no applause, though not for

the reason given by Mr. Jefferson. Butthe audiences of half a century ago andmore were either more impressionable

than those of to-day, or else, as the sur-

vivors af&rm, they had better reason for

being impressed. Certain it is that Mrs.

Siddons and Kean and the elder Booth

had a power over their houses that even

Salvini has not exercised in our owntime.

It is also clear that in bodily pres-

ence the elder Booth was more impos-

ing, though not more brilliant, than

the younger. Yet there was a resem-

blance between them— a resemblance

that showed itself mainly in the shape

of head and face ; in the arch of eye-

brow, ^Hhe actor's feature'' for which

both men were notable ; and in a mo-

EDWI]^ BOOTH 13

bility and positive radiance of face that

were among Edwin Booth's most beauti-

ful endowments. His eyes were dark

brown, and so full of light that boys andgirls often kept the look of them as

almost the sole recollection of plays in

which they had seen him. I, for one,

saw Booth's Shylock at a very early age;

and for years after, I remember, the

Jew to me was nothing but a pair of

eyes, large, dark, awful, and bright—above all, bright, and seeming to give

out light. In the opinion of Mr. Will-

iam Winter, ^^only one man of our time

has equalled Edwin Booth in this sin-

gular splendour of countenance— the

great IS'ew England orator Eufus Choate.

Had Choate been an actor upon the

stage— as he was before a jury— with

those terrible eyes of his, and that pas-

sionate Arab face, he must have towered

fully to the height of the tradition of

George Frederick Cooke." In poise,

grace, and swiftness of motion, for which

14 EDWm BOOTHtlie elder Booth was famous, neither he

nor any one could well have surpassed

his son. Of the middle height and size,

the younger Booth was closely knit andadmirably proportioned. His physical

command of himself recalled the Ger-

man traveller's note that Garrick seemed

all right hand, so that within Booth's

easy achievement were the march of

Othello, lago^s leopard tread, and the

tottering majesty of Lear. His voice,

although a little ^^ veiled''— at least in

later years— ranged wide and carried

far. Its sweetness and strength spoke to

the inner even more than to the outer

ear. It stirred not only the blood but

the spirit.

IL

The youth of this rare person was

schooled by constant association with a

man of genius, and saddened by his

strange, almost mad perversities. Butin forming an artist and disciplining a

character, the privilege of being son to

the elder Booth far outweighed the fre-

quent penalty of acting as his guardian.

Edwin Thomas Booth— Edwin after

Edwin Forrest— was born at the Mary-

land farm on ISTovember 13, 1833. Thenegroes said he was ^^born lucky'' and^^ gifted to see ghosts,'' because there was

a brilliant shower of meteors on the night

of the boy's birth, and because he was

born with a caul. His first recollection

of his father was of their having travelled

a whole day together and reaching the

Farm late at night, under the dark trees.

A man who had come with them to take

back the hired horses they had ridden,

went away into the night; and Booth

16 EDWm BOOTHlifted his little son over the snake-fence

into the grass, saying as he did so—"Your foot is on your native heath.''

The boy's education began under Miss

Susan Hyde, who taught the rudiments

to boys and girls. Miss Hyde, whoafterward became secretary of the Pea-

body Institute in Baltimore, was always

affectionately remembered by her most

distinguished pupil. Somewhat later,

Booth sent his son to an old Frenchman,

a West-Indian naval officer, M. Louis

Dugas. He went— probably for a very

short time— to ^^ a university " which

Mrs. Clarke does not name ; and studied

intermittently with a Mr. Kearney, whowrote all his own school-books. Kear-

ney encouraged his boys to act scenes

from plays, and on one occasion the

elder Booth, sitting on the corner of a

bench near the door, was an unseen

and a gratified witness of the quarrel

between Brutus and Cassius^ recited with

gestures by Edwin Booth and John S.

EDWIK BOOTH 17 }

Clarke, whose delightful art afterward led'

him quite away from tragedy. Theyoung Eomans wore white linen trousers

and black jackets, then the fashion.\

Mr. J. H. Hewitt, of Baltimore, remem-bered Edwin as ^^a comely lad ...dressed in a Spanish cloak.''

A varied education was made still

more fragmentary by periodical trips,

on which Edwin Booth had the respon-

sible task of caring for the health and

even the safety of his father. In Louis-;

ville, to give one example of the sort of s

thing that often happened, Booth had i

on a certain night been playing Bichard '

III with great brilliancy. On the way \

to his hotel he suddenly determined to|

walk the streets alone. When he found !

that Edwin would not leave him, he\

went rapidly to a long covered market,

in which he began to walk up and

down. The promenade, from end to

end of the market, did not cease until

daylight. Now hastening, now lagging.

18 EDWIN BOOTHthe father could not shake off his son,

who— sometimes angry, sometimes ready

to laugh, and always weary— kept his

father^ s changing pace until morning

moved Booth to go home to bed. During

the whole time neither had spoken a

word.

It is not strange that such experiences

as these should have made a sensitive

youth grave beyond his years ; or that

more painful demands upon his patience

and courage, with no anodyne of the ab-

surd, should have deepened his inherited

melancholy. The noble motto of the

noble Italian house, ^^ Though sad, I amstrong, '

' might well have been this boy' s.

And at only one moment of later life, in

the disaster that almost crushed him,

could he have felt its sadness or needed

its strength more than in the early, hard

probation of being attendant, dresser,

and guardian, to a man whose genius was

not without its authenticating strain of

madness.

EDWIN BOOTH 19

In spite of all this association with the

theatre, the actor's son saw little of its

processes. His father intended him to

be a cabinet-maker. ^^ During my con-

stant attendance on him in the thea-

tre''— says Edwin Booth in ^^Some

Words about my Father"— ^^he for-

bade my quitting his dressing-room—where he supposed my school-lessons

were studied. But the idle boy, ignor-

ing Lindley Murray and such small deer,

seldom seeing the actors, listened at the

keyhole to the garbled text of the mighty

dramatists, as given in the acting ver-

sions of the plays. By this means at an

early age my memory became stored

with the words of all the parts of every

play in which my father performed."

It is common knowledge that the loss

of one sense often sharpens the others.

Who shall say that so much hearing

without seeing, did not tune the listen-

er's ear, and train unconsciously the

tongue that was afterward to rob the

Hybla bees'?

20 EDWIN BOOTHiN'ot only was the boy forbidden to see

plays, but he seldom heard his father

speak of actors or the theatre. Onlyonce, indeed, was he allowed to hear anyof the elder Booth's recollections of the

stage. This was on an occasion when,

after reading ^ ^ Coriolanus " to his son^^ until far into the morning, he spoke

of the marvellous acting of EdmundKean."

Clearly enough, however, EdwinBooth's hereditary talent, his delphic

association with the theatre, his strange

responsibilities, and the grotesque con-

trasts of his life, were hurrying the neg-

lectful grammar-student into a closer

walk with ^Hhe mighty dramatists'' to

whom he had hearkened so attentively.

Yet, when he made his first appearance

on any stage, it was by accident, and—characteristically enough— to do some

one a kindness. Mr. Thoman, whodoubled the parts of prompter and actor,

was attending to some detail in prepara-

EDWIN BOOTH 21

tion for the elder Booth's Eichard III

at the Boston Museum. Suddenly he

turned to Edwin, who was standing by,

and exclaimed:— ^^This is too muchwork for one man

;you ought to play

TresseV^ The boy consented, and, whenthe night of the play came— it was Sep-

tember 10, 1849— he was called to his

father's dressing-room. Booth, dressed

for Eichard, then catechised his son as

if the two had been teacher and pupil

:

^ ^ ^Who was Tressel 1'

^^^A messenger from the field of

Tewkesbury.'^^ ^ What was his mission ^

'

^^ ^ To bear the news ofthe defeat ofthe

king's party.'

^^ ^How did he make the journey? '

^^ ^ On horseback.'^' ^ Where are your spurs ?

'

^^ Edwin glanced quickly down"—he had doubtless told the story more than

once to Mrs. Clarke, from whose account

the dialogue is taken—^^and said he

had not thought of them.

22 EDWIK BOOTH^' ^Here, take mine.'

^^ Edwin unbuckled his father's spurs,

and fastened them on his own boots.

His part being ended on the stage, he

found his father still sitting in the dress-

ing-room, apparently engrossed in

thought.^^ ^ Have you done well ? ' he asked.^^ ^I think so,' replied Edwin.

^^^Give me my spurs,' rejoined his

father, and obediently young Tressel

replaced the spurs upon Gloucester's

feet."

The only copy of the bill of this per-

formance which is known to be in exist-

ence, was given by the actor of Tressel

to the Players' Club, where it hangs in

the dining-room.

What followed the performance is no

less interesting than what preceded. Bythat time the Eoman father had softened.

^^ After my debut in the very small part

of Tressel '^— wrote the son almost forty

years later— ^^he ^coddled' me; gave

EDWIN BOOTH 23

me gruel (his usual meal at night, when

acting) and made me don his worsted

night-cap, which when his work was

ended he always wore as a protection for

his heated head, to prevent me from

taking cold after my labours, which

were doubtless very exhausting on that

occasion, being confined to one brief

scene at the beginning of the play !"

In the next summer Edwin Booth

made a more ambitious trial of his

wings, though in a more secluded scene

— the court-house at Belair. There, on

the evening of August 2, Mr. EdwinBooth and Mr. J. S. Clarke gave

^^Shakespearian Eeadings, Etc." Theformer's part of the programme included

selections from ^^Eichard III,'' ^^The

Merchant of Venice,'' and ^' Eichelieu "5

^^ Hamlet's Soliloquy on Death" ; and

^^The Celebrated Dagger Scene from

Macbeth." The young men slackened

the tension with ^^ Etc.," for ^^ during

the evening they sang a number of negro

24 EDWIN BOOTHmelodies with blackened faces, using

appropriate dialect, and accompanying

their vocal attempts with the somewhat

inharmonious banjo and bones.'' Those

fragments of Shakespeare, recited half a

century ago in the Maryland woods, were

probably ardent and faithful imitations

of the elder Booth, but the imagination

can paint no picture of his son as Brother

Bones. Neither he nor any of his fam-

ily— on the stage, at all events— ever

^ had the giffc of making people laugh.

III.

DuEiNa Booth's second season on the

stage, that of 1851, he played again in

^^Eichard III/' but this time as Eich-

ard himself, at the l^ational Theatre,

^N^ew York. In his opinion his father

had determined to test his ^ Equality.''

His own account of the experiment is

worth reading. ^^One evening, just as

he [the elder Booth] should have started

for the theatre to prepare for his per-

formance of Eichard III, he feigned ill-

ness 5 nor would he leave the bed where

he had been napping (his custom always

in the afternoon), but told me to go and

act Eichard for him. This amazed me,

for my experience as yet had been con-

fined to minor parts. But he could not

be coaxed to waver from his determina-

tion not to act that night, and as it was

time for the manager to be notified, there

was no course to pursue but to go to the

theatre to announce the fact. ^Well/

26 EDWIN BOOTHexclaimed the manager, ^ there is no time

to change the bill 5 we must close the

house— unless you will act the part.'

The stage-director and several actors pres-

ent urged me to try it, and, before mybrain had recovered from its confusion,

they hurried me into my father's dress,

and on to the stage, in a state of bewil-

derment.'' Someone heard the novice

repeat the soliloquy, and he was soon be-

fore a crowded house. As no explana-

tion had been made, the son was greeted

with a great round of applause intended

for the father. As soon as the audience

discovered their mistake, they lapsed

into utter silence and allowed the piece

to begin. Although the difficultly

placed young actor played as he hadseen his father play, in look and tone

and gesture, his achievement was some-

thing more than even the best of imita-

tions, for the suddenly interrupted ap-

plause soon began again, and in a key

which must have assured the performer

EDWm BOOTH 27

that lie had won it for himself. He thus

modestly concludes his own too brief ac-

count of the episode:—^^My effort was

not altogether futile, for it satisfied myfather that his boy's prospects were fair

for, at least, a reputable position in the

profession. . . . Thenceforth he made no

great objection to my acting occasionally

with him, although he never gave meinstruction, professional advice or en-

couragement in any form : he had,

doubtless, resolved to make me work myway unaided ; and though his seeming

indifference was painful then, it com-

pelled me to exercise my callow wits;

it made me think ! And for this he has

ever had my dearest gratitude."

The character of Gloster has always

been a favourite with actors. It is no

wonder, since whoever wrote the play—let us for convenience say Shakespeare—could not easily have done them a better

service. Against a necessary background

of persons dramatically insignificant, and

28 EDWIK BOOTHthe undramatic lamentation of queens

and other distressed ladies of rank, whorepeat one another as only Maeterlinck's

people do nowadays, the author has

thrown in dominant relief a figure of gi-

gantic evil, an all-conquering fiend in

gorgeous raiment. We cannot recapture

the old performances of Gloster or the de-

light the old audiences felt in them, nor

have we better means of recovering Ed-

win Booth's early renderings of the part

in Gibber's theatrical patchwork called

' ^Eichard III. '' The effectiveness of that

version is of the sort which perpetually

tempts the actor to over-act. As Booth

ripened late, it is probable that, in his

younger, cruder state, he was a brill-

iantly docile pupil of a school not

averse to violent effects. By the time I

saw him, although there was still (and

continued till the end to be) an ever-

lessening degree of old-fashioned theat-

ricality in all his impersonations, he sel-

dom, even in ^^ Eichard III," played

EDWm BOOTH 29

obviously for points. Gibber, and all

that Gibber typified, had long since been

discarded. Booth's version of the orig-

inal would have been still better than it

was, had he taken the pioneer step, not

yet taken, I think, of omitting BicharWs

proposal to Queen Elizabeth^ which comes

like a faded echo of the direct proposal

to the Lady Anne. But that is a detail,

though an important one.

Booth's dressing of the character—splendid, as Gloster^s apparel is knownto have been— proclaimed the man he

represented. He wore long brown hair,

cut straight across the forehead, and a

ring on the third finger of his left hand.

He reproduced the king's habit of

sheathing and unsheathing his dagger.

The hump was a suggestion, not an ob-

trusion, of deformity. This Eichard had^^entertained a score or two of tailors"

not only ^Ho study fashions to adorn his

body,'' but also to conceal the ill turn

Nature had done him, and leave him a

30 EDWra BOOTHmonster solely in his mind. Even the

moral hump was not obtruded. Booth

remembered Bichard* s '' dissembling

looks" as well as ^Hhe plain devil"

that rejoiced within him, but was never

fully revealed except where the text de-

manded it. Some modern actors, follow-

ing tradition, have made Richard confide

too much in the audience. The audi-

ence got no direct information from

Booth except in the asides and the solilo-

quies, which thus of course gained all the

more by contrast. BicharWs many en-

trances, most of them unreasonably well

timed, gave Booth an opportunity that

he richly used, of showing the apparent

omnipresence of strong evil. A cheer-

ful, brisk malignant, he strode here,

there, and everywhere, about the stage,

speaking and acting the lines in such a

way as to show that the villain's life-

work was his pleasure not less than his

business. Into his smiling seduction of

the Lady Anne he put enough of the ser-

EDWIN BOOTH 31

pent to bedevil any daughter of Eve and

rouse cynical thoughts in the sons of

Adam. I, for one, don't believe the

scene when I read it ; but Booth's act-

ing, if he was in the mood— for he was i

the most unequal of players— compelled

belief until the episode was over. His

bits of hypocrisy were delicious, andof an intellectual keenness that always

drew smiles and a ripple of appreciation

from the audience. I^othing in this kind

could be better than the mock-humility

with which Booth's Eichard knelt andasked the Duchesses blessing, unless in-

deed it were the fine insolence with

which he spoke the lines that follow the

poor lady's ^^God bless thee" :—

^^ Amen ! And make me die a good oldman

:

That is the butt end of a mother'sblessing

:

I marvel why her grace did leave it

out."

This light treatment of so much that

32 EDWm BOOTHmost Richards have treated heavily, wasnot only right in itself, but it contrasted

sharply with the sudden thunder of the

sentence pronounced on Hastings, with

.the threat against Stanley, g^nd with the

lowering tone and look Booth gave to

that most royal snub :—

^'Thou troublest me; I am not in the

dWn'*^ vein.''

Many critics have praised, and praised

highly. Booth's rendering of the dreamand the soliloquy that follows it. As I

remember this part of the performance,

his mode of giving the soliloquy was

a blot on an achievement made up of

many perfections. The restraint, the

tempered art of previous scenes, gave

way here to a flaming theatricality that

gravely hurt— though it could not de-

stroy— the actor's consciousness andvivid revelation of BicharWs tortured

soul. In all of the same scene that pre-

cedes the dream. Booth was altogether

.V'

EDWm BOOTS 33

admirable. The dim light in the tent

and the muffled drum withoat, conspired

with his gloomy fitfulness and his sombre

voice in the few words given him. to

send out among all the spectators a m --

sage of foreboding— a feeling that the '

i

king foresaw his doom. The line,

j

'^Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle

I^orfolk,'^

Booth spoke resolutely, yet with a curi- i

ous sweetness and melancholy, and as if\

he already tasted the morning of his de- ]

feat. The fight and the fall were pro-

digious. !

As a part of Booth's general concep- '

tion— a conception in which the humpand the limp were minimised— it should

be remembered that he always repre-

sented Eichard as a man of restless Intel-;

lect and great personal fascination.;

Also, departing wholly from the ruf&an\

theory held by more than one famousi

,actor. Booth seldom allowed Eichard to i

34 EDWm" BOOTHforget his kingship, but gave him dig-

nity at his most atrocious moments. *^ I

was born so high/' cries Gloster to Dorsety

*^Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind and scorns

the sun.''

These lines, the most exalted and the

most imaginative in a play that, byShakespeare^s gauge, lacks imagination,

mark the Plantagenet's consciousness of

his rank. Taken with other utterances

of BicharWs towering pride, the speech

might have been Booth's warrant for

cloaking the king's crimes with majesty.

IV.

Soon after Edwin Booth's first play-

ing of Bichard he made an engagement

with Theodore Barton, of Baltimore, to

act any part given him, at a salary of

six dollars a week. Valuable as the

training probably was, Booth seldom

succeeded in little parts or in plays

other than tragedy. One of his direst

failures was an attempt in pantomime

with Madame Ciocca, who abused himin broken English for his awkwardstruggle to be graceful in a light and

airy fashion. Excellent discipline, too,

was this failure for a youth who had

determined to become a well-graced

actor and to make every fibre in his

body expressive.

In the year 1852 the elder Booth,

Junius and Edwin with him, sailed from

Kew York for California. A weekbrought them to Aspinwall, whence they

went up the Ohagres Eiver to Gorgona,

36 EDWIK BOOTHon a flat-boat that carried both pas-

sengers and luggage. They passed one

well-remembered night at Gorgona,

sleeping or trying to sleep in a hut, on

trunks and wine-casks. The onlv womanin the party occupied a hammock. Each

man held a pistol under his pillow.

Edwin, unable to sleep, could see the

natives sharpening their maeheetos—'^or long knives which they used to

cut the tall grass in front of them as

they journeyed on foot'' — but could

not understand their whispered talk.

Eats ran about the hut during the night.

In the morning the unrefreshed travel-

lers rose and proceeded on mules across

the isthmus.

After an engagement of two weeks at

San Francisco, whose tentative civilisa-

tion may have seemed eftete by contrast

with the Booths' checkered progress to

it, they went on to Sacramento. There,

for his benefit, the elder Booth put up

"Eichard III." Next night Junius,

EDWIN BOOTH 37

at his benefit^ played Othello to Msfather's lago. On the third night of

benefits, Edwin took his as Jaffier to his

father's Pierre, in ^^ Venice Preserved.''

This very rhetorical but very interesting

tragedy, although now unknown to the

young play-goer, was an important por-

tion of his grandfather's dramatic meat

and drink. When the elder Booth

caught sight of Edwin in his Jaffier

costume— it was of course, black— he

said: ^^ You look like Samlet; why did

you not act Samlet for your benefit *?"

Edwin replied,— ^^ IfI ever have another,

I mlV^ At his next benefit, which did

not occur until after the death of his

father, he remembered the lightly spoken

word, and played Samlet,

Disappointed at the lack of a suitable

theatre in San Francisco, and influenced

also by the sudden coming of ^^hard

times," the elder Booth, in October,

1852, started for New York. As Edwinwas now in earnest to be an actor, his

38 EDWm BOOTHfather would not take him along, but

advised him to go on with his profession

in California. He took the advice and,

when the hard times soon becameharder, he agreed with Mr. D. W.Waller to go with him to a town or

settlement called INTevada. There Booth

first acted lago. At parting, his brother

Junius (J. B. Booth, Jr.) had said to

him :— ^^ Put a slug [^ a large octagonal

gold piece of fifty dollars ' ] in the bottom

of your trunk, forget you have it, and

when things are at the worst, bring out

the slug.'' It was soon time to dig

up the buried treasure. With ruin

staring them in the face, the people of

ISTevada had not a penny for the fine

arts, and the theatrical thermometer

registered zero. The physical tempera-

ture was scarcely higher. Snow fell

incessantly until the poor strollers were

cut off from the world. One night,

when the theatre had been ^^dark'' a

fortnight. Booth was walking along a

EDWIN BOOTH 39

road where the gold-diggers had under-

mined the houses and left dangerous

gulches. Suddenly, in the mud and

snow and darkness, he came face to face

with a man carrying a lantern. By its

flickering dimness he made out the

features of George Spear, an actor fa-

miliarly called ^^Old Spudge,'' whoexclaimed, ^^ Hello! Ted, is that you?

There's a mail in, and a letter for you, '

'

The retarded courier had at last broken

through the drifts and arrived on horse-

back with the mail-bag.^* What news is there 1 " asked Booth.

^^Not good news for you, my boy.''

In the tone of the reply or the look of the

speaker, the boy seemed to read an omen,

for he cried out, ^^ Spear, is my father

dead?" The old actor led him back,

half-crazed, to the hotel, where the kind

friends who tried to calm him were none

the less kind because they could not

fathom his deep grief or understand his

self-reproach for having allowed his

father to go home alone.

40 EDWm BOOTHStill the cold held, still the snow fell,

and men considered what to do. Win-ter and misfortune had made equals in

]:^evada of ^^ ruffian, gambler, labourer,

and scholar.'' One day, as a group of

the motley democracy stood at a street

corner bewailing their outcast state, someone proposed that they should walk to

Marysville. Among those who took upthe gage were an actor named Barry anda musician whose violin, a la Paganini's

single string, had been the theatre's

whole orchestra. Booth added himself

to the handful of adventurers 5 andtogether, the foremost being road-

breaker, they tramped fifty miles across

the snowy mountains. At the end of

the second day they came to Marysville,

where they disbanded. Booth wentthence to Sacramento.

After more days of leanness and a

hard though profitable apprenticeship at

^^ utility" parts under the managementof J. B. Booth and the Messrs. Chap-

EDWIIST BOOTH 41

man, in San Francisco, Edwin Booth had.

a great success as Bichard III, played for

the benefit of Fairchild, a scene-painter.

Sir Giles Overreach and Macbeth were

good seconds in public favour. Sam-let, although the managers urged it upon

Booth, he consistently refused to play

until a benefit was offered him. Thecareless pledge made to his father, had

become ^^an oath in Heaven.'* J. B.

Booth, in spite of his brother's triumphs,

thought him still of a pupil age, and

reduced him three times from star parts

to utility. This apparent snubbing, as

he once said to Mr. William Winter, was

^^a lesson for crushed tragedians.''

And Booth's unquestioning docility, no

less than the power to act effectively to

his father's audiences parts in which his

father had long been famous, adapted to

him Heine's saying about another youth

of rich promise, that he had a magnificent

past before him.

Booth went on briskly accumulating

42 EDWIJST BOOTHhis past by taking a trip to Australia in

the year 1854, with Miss Laura Keene,

a well-known actress of the time, andD. C. Anderson, a much older actor

whose intimate friendship he had formed.

On going aboard their brig, Boothdiscovered that two ladies had invited

themselves to share his voyage and act

with him in Australia. One was the

captain's wife, who had been an actress

and was then insane 5 the other, an ac-

tress of ^^ heavy business'' who was not

without vogue in San Francisco. Ko one

of the three player-queens had known the

intentions of either of the others. Whenthey met on the brig, with their respec-

tive wardrobes, the scene must havebeen comedy, broadening into farce or

darkening into melodrama : the record

doesn't tell us which.

The voyage from San Francisco to

Sydney lasted seventy-two days, during

twelve of which the vessel was becalmed.

In Sydney Booth played a satisfactory

EDWIN BOOTH 43

engagement, opening with ShylocJc, which

he had never acted before. At Mel-

bourne, which was less auspicious than

Sydney, Booth and Miss Keene parted.

He then took passage with Anderson

and a few other players for the Sand-

wich Islands. At Honolulu, Booth—who had just fifty dollars in his pocket—hired the only theatre and brought out

^^Eichard III,'^ ^^ The Lady of Lyons/'

and other plays. As the court was in

mourning for the King of the Sandwich

Islands, his successor could not go pub-

licly to the play ; but, on his signifying

a wish to see Booth's Eichard, His

Majesty was seated on the stage-throne,

placed in the wings with a theatrical

robe thrown over it. ^^His escort'' —says Mrs. Clarke— ^^ who were a French-

man and a huge Kanaka, the latter wear-

ing a military jacket, white trousers, and

a long sword, stood by his side." In the

coronation scene Booth had t6 trouble

His Majesty for the throne, which, as a

44 EDWIlSr BOOTHmatter of fact, was but an arm-chair

;

and Kamehamelia lY obligingly stood

until Eichard III was duly crowned.

Entertaining as was a good deal of tlie

Sandwich. Island venture, its gains were

not enough to keep Booth from going

back soon to California. At Sacra-

mentO; during the dramatic season of

1855, he ^^ created" the part of Eaphael

in the first American production of

^^ The Marble Heart.'' More hardships

followed, ending in a second penniless

return to Sacramento, which had played

a curiously varied part in Booth's West-

ern travels. Good friends, however, ar-

ranged two benefits, and in San Fran-

cisco he was given a third, at which he

acted King Lear for the first time— in

the Tate version, afterward discarded.

September, 1856, ended the California

period, which, with the Australian and

Sandwich-Island nine months, had lasted

a little over four years. ^^The world's

rough hand" had, with roughest meth-

EDWIN BOOTH 45

ods, in these four years at the world's

university^ fashioned a boy into a manand an artist. He had studied men andcities, as well as Shakespeare and the

stage. Though he did not know it then,

the day of small things, small cares, andmeagre living, had passed : the manybright days of an illustrious career were

opening before him. True (though this,

also, he happily could not know), their

brightness was to be shadowed— once

almost eclipsed forever— by griefs of a

kind to make poverty, anxiety for the

morrow, cold, almost hunger itself, seemlight and trivial annoyances. But fame

was to be his inalienable possession ; and

fortune, won at first only to be lost, was

to be won again in even larger measure,

and used to his lasting honour. Better

than the fame and fortune so soon to be

his, more important, perhaps, than any

other element in Booth's nature or train-

ing, was the fact that both the man andthe actor were of a sort to crystallise

46 EDWIN BOOTHlate. He had still, and knew that he

had, a thousand things to learn, and he

never wearied of the lesson. So that the

Booth whom the world saw and his

Mends knew, in the eighties, was a

much nobler creature than the brilliant,

winning young man who, in the fifties,

fulfilled the prophecy of his Californian

friends and took the American stage bystorm.

V.

Booth's first Eastern successes were

in Baltimore^ Washington, Eiclimond,

Charleston, Kew Orleans, and other

Southern towns. To Boston, however,

he looked for a decision whether he

should keep on as a ^^star," or ^^ retire

to the stock.'' ^^The playgoers of that

city," Mr. Winter tells us, ^^were re-

markable for refinement of taste and

severity of judgment, and Booth assured

me that he looked forward to his appear-

ance there with trepidation." Such was

his trepidation, such his modesty, that

he wrote afterward in a manuscript

note: ^^The height of my expectation

was to become a leading actor in a 'New

York theatre, after my starring tour—which I supposed would last a season or

two."

On the evening of April 20, 1857,

Booth appeared at the Boston Theatre,

one of the very largest of playhouses,

48 EDWm BOOTHin the character of Sir Giles Overreach.

Not yet twenty-four years old, lie was

called to make his difficult essay before

a small audience in a large theatre.

Worse than this, many of the few present

were white-haired, critical persons whohad seen the elder Booth act Sir Giles in

the fulness of his power. The spring

night was chill, as spring nights often

are in Boston. ^^When Sir Giles ap-

peared'' — so runs Mrs. Clarke's account

— ^^oud and prolonged applause greeted

him ; then (as he described it) the people

braced themselves, self-satisfied, in their

seats, as if to say, Now, young man, let

us see what you can do for yourself.

The play proceeded quietly until the

fourth act, when the player was on his

mettle. This Boston indorsement was

to decide his future ; and with a nervous

calm he reserved himself for the last

great scenes. The effect was electrifying,

the call genuine and spontaneous 5 he

knew his power, and felt that he was

EDWIK BOOTH 49

safe. The next day his pronounced

success was universally acknowledged,

and the press was unanimous in his

praise. '^ Mr. Winter, who was amongthe young persons in the house, records

that Booth '' was completely victorious. '

'

In this, as in all his victories, he re-

mained modest, but he no longer mis-

trusted himself or doubted his ownIDOwers.

From Boston Booth went to XewYork, where, at Burton^ s Metropolitan

Theatre, on May 4, he began (against

his will) with Bichard III. In this

performance, says Ireland, author of

Records of the New York Stage, Booth

^^gave evidence of the highest order of

talenf Sir Giles, ShylocJc, Lear, and

Borneo, followed 5 Hamlet, Claude Mel-

notte, Sir Edward Mortimer, Petrucliio,

St. Pierre, The Stranger, Lucius Brutus,

and Pescara. Bichelieu, first played byBooth at Sacramento, in July, 1856, was

also among the characters in another

50 EDWIN BOOTH^' completely victorious '

' engagement.

In measuring the value of Booth's NewYork success, it is well to remember Mr.

Jefferson's statement about one aspect of

the New York theatres in that very year.

After speaking of his own engagement,

in September, 1857, for ^Hhe leading

comedy '^ at Laura Keene's theatre, he

says: ^^It was my first appearance on

the western side of the city. ... It

was looked upon as a kind of presump-

tion in those days for an American actor

to intrude himself into a Broadwaytheatre 5 the domestic article seldom

aspired to anything higher than the

Bowery ; consequently I was regarded

as something of an interloper.''

August 31 saw Booth beginning

another series of performances at the

Metropolitan, which he followed with a

second trip through the South and one

to the West. In 1858, at the Eichmondtheatre, he met Miss Mary Devlin, after-

ward his wife. This gentle, beautifal

EDWIN BOOTH 51

girl was a good musician and at least

a pleasing actress, but left tlie stage upon

her betrothal to Booth in 1859. OnJuly 7, I860, they were married by the

Eev. Dr. Osgood at his house, 'No, 154

(now 113) West 11th Street, New York.

In the winter of 1879-80 Booth went to

the house and asked to see again the

clergyman's study, in which, he said,

he had ^^ secured his greatest happi-

ness. '^ The all too short life of the two

together was indeed a happy one. Yery

soon after their marriage, Mrs. Booth

accompanied her husband to England,

where they lived till September, 1862.

Their only child, Edwina, now Mrs. Ig-

natius Grossmann, was born at Fulham,

London, December 9, 1861. When the

Booths came back to America, they

made their home at Dorchester, Massa-

chusetts. Although the health of Mrs.

Booth had already broken, she was not

thought seriously ill when Booth left her

to go upon a distant tour. But they

52 EDWIN BOOTHnever met again, for Mrs. Booth grew

suddenly worse, and died on February

21, 1863. At Mount Auburn, almost a

third of a century later, her husband was

laid beside her. The beauty of Mrs.

Booth's face was commemorated in one

art by Eastman Johnson and W. J.

Hennessey ; in another, her virtues and

the loveliness of her nature were finely

suggested by Parsons, a true poet whois little read. Booth wrote of his loss to

Adam Badeau :— ^^ My heart is crushed,

dryed up, and desolate. . . . My child

can never fill her place, for she was mychild, my baby-wife. Every little toy

of hers, every little scrap of paper the

most worthless, are full of her because

she has touched them. They recall her

more vividly than the baby does. . . .

She climbs my knee, and prattles all

day long to me ; but still she is not the

baby I have loved and cherished so de-

votedly.'' Later in the same letter the

mourner cries out that he needs ^^some

EDWIN BOOTH 53

sign from her, some little breath of wind,

nothing more, whispering comfortable

words of her.''

That Booth was capable of ardent

friendship as of ardent love, he gave

more than one gracious token. For

Captain Eichard Gary, one of his dear-

est friends, who was killed in the Civil

War, he expressed his affection in a

remarkable letter to Cary's sister, Mrs.

Felton, of Cambridge. ^^But, above

alP' — this is a part of what Booth

wrote, under date of September 11,

1862— ''the sad, sweet relic he has left

me— the letter signed with his death—will forever be to me a source of conso-

lation. It will keep forever fresh the

truth of him who thought of his friend

even on the field of battle.

^^ Eichard was always in my eyes the

noblest of men, and his conduct in the

face of death proves that I was right in

my judgment of him. He was a hero

born ; he acted as Eichard Cary only

54 EDWm BOOTH]

could act,— nobly, unselfishly, bravely. '

I knew it would be so ; I knew that he

would be loved by all about him 5 and I

knew that if he fell, he would be found '

contented, grand in death. I can appre-j

ciate the feelings of him who felt like

kissing him. ...1

^^With dearest love for you all, in!

which my wife joins me, believe mej

ever your friend and servant, and your !

brother's lover, Edwin Booth.'' I

\

During the stay in England already :

spoken of. Booth played at the Hay-j

market his first London engagement. \

He began in September, 1861, with\

Shylock; continued a not too successful:

venture with Sir Giles Overreach^ and\

ended with Eichelieu, a character in]

which he at last excited enthusiasm. :

From London he went to Liverpool and|

Manchester. At Manchester, Henryj

Irving— then a member of the stockj

company that supported Booth— played I

EDWIN BOOTH 55

Laertes to liis Hamlet^ Cassio to his Othello,

Bassanio to his ShylocJc, Wellborn to his

Sir Giles, and BucJcingham to his Gloster.

A strong element of Booth's ill success

at that time was no doubt the deplorable

attitude of the English toward ^^ Yan-kees'' and their cause.

Before Booth's return to New York,

the Metropolitan Theatre, in Broadway-

opposite to the end of Bond Street, hadbecome the Winter Garden. Beginning

on September 29, 1862, Booth acted at

the renamed theatre, with brief inter-

vals, until March 23, 1867. This long

period was principally given to a series

of splendid and splendidly successful

performances of the standard drama.

During the first engagement Booth acted

Samlet, Othello, Lucius Brutus, ShylocJc,

Bichard LIL, Borneo, Bescara, Sir EdwardMortimer, and Don Ccesar de Bazan,

Not a poor part (though some poor

plays) in the list ; and each piece wasliberally put on the stage in accord with

56 EDWIN BOOTHthe best taste of the time. The eager

and continued zest of the public for these

representations, the approval of elect

persons in the community, and muchthoughtful discussion in newspapers andperiodicals, marked what would havebeen an achievement for any actor.

For an actor not yet thirty, the achieve-

ment was extraordinary.

^ ^ Long afterward, '' writes Mr. Winter,

^^ referring to the Winter Garden en-

gagement which his wife's death hadterminated, he said, ^ I had not yet got

the control of my devil.' His infirmity,

which he had inherited from his erratic

father— and which, in report, wasgreatly exaggerated— was an intermit-

tent craze for drink." This craze,

although he resisted it, from time to

time possessed him. From the day of

his wife's death, however, to the last dayof his own life, he was, in this regard,

master of himself. Mr. Winter, a pre-

cise and competent witness in the matter,

EDWIN BOOTH 67

declares that not only did Booth never

drink again to excess, but that, in the

last thirty years of his life, he would

very rarely allow himself alcohol even

as a medicine. In tobacco he did ex-

ceed, and tobacco slowly killed him.^^ He could not live without it, and yet

it steadily injured him." Toward the

end of his career— that is, in the last

four or five years of acting— his brain

seemed to be growing numb. He rallied

superbly again and again, but more andmore often he sank into apathy ; his

speech suffered ; and vertigo attacked

him. This sometimes happened whenhe was acting, and then certain news-

papers accused him of drunkenness. It

is pleasant to know that, all and singu-

lar, these charges were false. Booth hadgot ^^his deviP^ under foot, and never

let him up again into fighting position.

It is good to know also that through

grief he steadily grew stronger. His

near friends observed too that he became

58 EDWm BOOTHyet more humble, fuller of faith, more

gentle, than he had ever been. His

charities, always very generous, took a

still wider scope. And to these virtues

Booth, like the great sorrowful queen in

the play, added one more ^^ honour—

a

great patience.''

For the next few years he needed, and

showed that he possessed, the power to

bear prosperity well. In 1863 Booth

and his brother-in-law, J. S. Clarke,

bought the Walnut Street Theatre, Phil-

adelphia, which they directed together

from the summer of 1863 till March,

1870, when Clarke bought out his part-

ner. The two also undertook the man-

agement of the Winter Garden, associat-

ing with themselves— first as agent,

then as lessee— an injurious person

named Edmund OTlaherty, but called

William Stuart. Booth's first appear-

ance on the stage after the death of Mrs.

Booth was as Hamlet^ on September 21,

1863. With that performance began

EDWIK BOOTH 59

the new management of tlie Winter

Garden. Toward the end of the en-

gagement, which lasted till October 17,

Booth played Buy Bias for the first time.

The twenty-eighth of March, 1864, was

dies mirabilis, for on the evening of that

day, at Mblo's Garden, Booth gave his

first 'New York performance of Bertuccio,

in ^^The FooFs Eevenge.'' His acting

in this character, then and afterward,

transcended the effect of the theatre and— like Salvini's Conrad, Jananschek's

Lady JDedlocJc and Sortense, Jefferson^ s

Eip van WinMe, Dnse's Santuzza, and a

very few other impersonations that

might be named— seemed almost to

take its place in the personal experi-

ence of those who saw it.

Meanwhile the next important point

in Booth's progress was his acting of

Macbeth, also at Mblo's, with Charlotte

Oushman as Lady Macbeth, Miss Cush-

man dissented from the subtlety of

Booth's idea of the Thane of Cawdor,

60 EDWm BOOTHand— so it is said— begged him to re-

member that '^ Macbeth is the ancestor

of all the Bowery ruffians.'' An anti-

quated view.

A special performance of ^^ Julius

Caesar'' was given at the Winter Gar-

den on ISTovember 25, 1864, in aid of the

fund to erect a statue of Shakespeare in

Central Park. Edwin Booth acted Bru-

tuSj Junius acted CassiuSy and JohnWilkes, Mark Antony.

VI.

After a summer of preparation,

^^ Hamlet'' was put on the stage on the

evening of November 26. Exceeding all

American precedent for a play of Shake-

speare, it ran one hundred nights. ^^It

was more splendidly produced"—Mrs.

Clarke thought—^^than any other that

had ever been presented, with the excep-

tion, perhaps, of^ King John' and ^Eich-

ard III,' many years previously, at the

old Park Theatre, under the direction

of Mr. Charles Kean."

^^ Hamlet" could not run now for half

a hundred nights— partly, no doubt, be-

cause within the last twenty years there

have been so many exponents of the

Prince of Denmark. Although the other

tragedies of Shakespeare have vanished,

one by one, from the American stage,

until ^^ Macbeth" is the only one famil-

iar to it, ^^Eomeo and Juliet"— the

tragedy of young love— and '' Hamlet, '

'

62 EDWIN BOOTHShakespeare's anticipation of the sad-

ness and doubt of nineteenth-century

thought, experience ever new incarna-

tions. JN'ow, as always, every girl must

play Juliet I^ow, more than ever,

every young man must play SamletThe young actor is not checked but

rather urged by the fact that, within

the last twenty years, at least a dozen

more or less noteworthy Hamlets have

been seen upon our stage. Not one of

them was without interesting attributes.

Not one was quite a failure— not even

the epicene French Samlet that splashed

brilliantly about in the shallows of the

character.

But if they have' thus borne out the

truth of the old saying that no player

ever failed in Samlet, they have also

testified to the truth of what should be

equally a proverb— that no actor makeshis greatest success in that part. Sir

\^Henry Irving might have done it (for

he has more ideas to the scene in ^^ Ham-

EDWIK BOOTH 63

lef than any other three actors), ex-

cept that he is clogged by a grotesquely

unequal execution and by the inabilityj

to speak verse.

Of Booth's Samlet, as of his other per-

formances, it is strangely hard to write

intelligently, or even intelligibly, for

persons who never saw him, because

there is no actor on the American or the

English stage with whom he can reason-

ably be compared. Here is not to fol-

low a mourning paragraph on the de-

cadence of the stage. I should be sorry

to make another Jeremiah, however un-

important, in the long line of those who,

if their lamentations were to be believed,

would convince us that the theatre has

been degenerating ever since ^^ Eliza and

our James,'' and would make us wonder

why it is not extinct. On the contrary,

I see many hopeful signs in play-writers

and play-actors. I do not despair even

of play-goers. In saying that there is

no one on our stage at all like Booth, I

64 EDWII^ BOOTHmean merely that, with the passing of

serious drama in verse, the sort of actor

who could embody it has also gone.

'Booth represented the end of a tradition

in acting as clearly as Burns represented

the end of a tradition in song and ballad

writing. The school to which he be-

longed began with Burbage, included

Mrs. Siddons and the other Kembles,

ended in England with Macready, and

Iin America with Booth.

The word rhetorical, so often applied

• this famous school, is not a misnomer

if only it be remembered that their

native and acquired mastery of diction

— in the French sense— was but one

means of expressing the ideal quality of

the highest characters they imperson-

ated. Whatever their excesses and ex-

aggerations— and these have been the

objects of much refreshing satire long

before and long since ^^The Critic'' —the players of the old, or rhetorical, or

idealising school, were aware that poetic

rI to-

EDWIN BOOTH 65

tragedy is one thing and comedy of man-

ners another, that verse is one thing and

prose another. Booth, no more than

his predecessors, wonld have subscribed

to the notion that a character of Shake-

speare may fitly be rendered like a char-

acter of Pinero or the younger Dumas.

He was sure, if I may trust my recollec-

tion of his performances, that no creat-

ure of the poet's imagination is more

remote from Vhomme moyen sensuel (whomwe now know and value as the man in

the street), than Samlet^ Prince of Den- 1

marJc.

But, before considering Booth's man-

ner of portraying the prince, let me say

another word, however ineffectual, about

the kinship with Shakespeare that re-

vealed itself so nobly in his utterance of

Shakespeare's verse. The Greeks were

unanimous in their opinion that a voice

is the actor's chief gift. Plato knewwhat he was about when he excluded

from his ideal republic ^^ the actors, with

66 edwi:n^ booththeir sweet voices." For were they not

mouthL-pieces of those other inadmissible

persons, the poets? So that one of

Booth's passports to Shakespeare land

would have been the very means of

stopping him at Plato's frontier. As it

was with the Greeks, so it was with the

English actors from whom Booth de-

rived— actors of the old, or rhetorical,

or idealising school. When they did

not inherit good voices, they strove to

"build'' them. They studied hard,

moreover, not only to supply defects,

but to cover irremediable faults. Bet-

terton's '^ voice was low and grumbling;

yet he could tune it by an artfal climax,

which enforced universal attention, even

from fops and orange-girls." And with

their voices, good, bad, or indifferent,

but always trained, they learned to

speak both verse and prose.

r Booth, as we know, had by nature a

beautiful and eloquent voice. Listening

at the keyhole to his father, years of

EDWII!^ BOOTH 67

association with his father, and constant

self-training, with the aid of his own in-

tellect, taste, and aptitude, brought

Booth's delivery— especially of blank

verse— to such excellence that, during

the last twenty-five years of his career,

when he was without an English-speak-

ing rival in heroic parts in tragedy, his \

speech was a recognised model. It wasas far as possible from an artificial or

external elocution, which is a vain thing.

It was equally far from the laborious

diction of pedants. Booth did not

mouth, or recite, or— except in bad

moments— declaim, as it is to be feared

the old actors often did. Nor did he

croon or chant. He was simply a clear

medium for the poet ; and, with a per-

fect adherence to metre, he yet brought

out the meaning as easily as if he had

first learned to talk in iambic penta-|

meter, unrhymed.

Quite different is the present practice.

Mr. Henry A. Clapp, an eminent an-

68 EDWm BOOTHthority on the theatre, and especially

on the acting of Shakespeare's plays,

touched upon this matter in a fine appre-

ciation of Booth, contributed, not long

after his death, to the Atlantic Monthly,

^^ The vast majority of our players,'' says

Mr. Clapp, contrasting them with Booth,^^ helplessly and hopelessly stumble, now-

adays, in the attempt to interpret Shake-

speare's lines : if they essay the rhythm,

the meaning sujQTers a kind of smooth

asphyxiation at their hands ; if they

devote themselves to the thought, the

verse degenerates into a queer variety

of hitchy prose." In an interesting and

much talked ofShakespearian '' revival '

'

last year, it was sad to see how the able,

accomplished actor of the chief charac-

ter narrowed and broke the imaginative

horizon, how he dispelled the imagina-

tive atmosphere of his author, by turn-

ing the verse portions of the text into

^^a queer variety of hitchy prose."

And this was no isolated instance.

EDWIN BOOTH 69

More remarkable still in Bootli than

tlie interweaving of thought and music

which has become almost a lost art, was

his wise economy of emphasis. JSamleVs

^^A little more than kin and less thankind,"

MacbeW s

^^The mind I sway by and the heart I

bearShall never sag with doubt nor shake

with fear,"

logons

^^The wine she drinks is made ofgrapes"—

such lines are usually given, even bygood actors, with a hammer-and-anvilemphasis that Booth, in his maturity,

always avoided. In such cases he was

sparing of emphasis, and relied upon the

subtler means of inflection and quality of

tone. Another refinement of art— but /

to tell everything is the secret of being

"

a bore. It is enough to say that Booth

70 EDWIN BOOTHwas a past master of Shakespeare's verse

and prose. Like Salvini and Coquelin,

lie reversed tlie dreary modern triumpli

of the written over the spoken word,

and proved to all who had ears that

man may continue to be a speaking as

well as a writing animal.

As to Booth's Samlet In the first

place his father was right : he ^^ looked

like SamleV^ Gentlemen of the stage

may make themselves up for the part

like Mr. Beerbohm Tree, with light

brown hair and beard, and the general

aspect of bookish troubadours. Or they

may ^^ discharge it" in ^^your French-

crown-coloured beard, your perfect yel-

low.' ' They may put on the red wig of

Fechter, which was red, by the way, and

not at all '^ blond''— it is to be seen at

the Players' Club in New York. But

however they follow tradition, or defy

it, they won' t look much like Hamlet to

all those of us who saw the dark-haired,

unbearded Samlet of Edwin Booth, his

EDWm BOOTH 71

pale face lighted with darkly bright,

melancholy eyes. As he looked whenhe followed the Ghost, when he spoke

the brooding phrases of ^^To be or not

to be," when he took his wild farewell

of Ophelia— at almost any juncture of

the play, indeed, Booth's picture would

have made a portrait of the Prince of

Denmark.

The much discussed question of the

Prince's madness. Booth settled as the

vast majority of actors inevitably settle

it. If Hamlet is mad, there is no tragedy

— for him— except a purely physical

one. If, as Dr. Furness holds, he is

neither mad nor pretending to be so,

why then we must wait a little while for

a performer super-subtle enough to makethat plain to the audience and at the

same time get any effect out of his im-

personation. Booth, as he once wrote

to an inquiring correspondent, thought

Hamlet mad only in '' craft," and there-

fore, of course, represented him as simu-

lating lunacy.

72 EDWm BOOTHBooth's performance of the character,

as a whole, probably kept to the last

more of his early artificiality than was

allowed to linger in other roles ; morev^^ of the mannerisms, or shall one say man-

fnev, of the old school. Moved by a

laudable wish to preserve the imagina-

tive remoteness of Samletj Booth began

(and long continued) to play the part

on stilts. Trustworthy observers noted,

however, that, as time went on, he grew

less and less stilted. A great comedian

once said in my hearing that he preferred

Booth's later Samlet because he ^' left

out so much '' — in other words, because

he simplified the poses, action, gestures,

and ^^ business" of the performance.

With a less arbitrary and exalted methodof showing the awfulness of HamleVs ex-

perience and his aloofness from commonlife, came a more humanised tone in

many passages and some whole scenes.

The gradual change was strikingly ex-

emplified in the tenderness of HamleVs

EDWm BOOTH 73

manner toward SoratiOj after the first

act ; in the seemingly spontaneous grace

of his speech to the players ] and in the

enlivening, without hurt to dignity,

of his last colloquy with Eosencrantz andGuildenstern. Toward all his inferiors

this Hamlet grew more gentle, and in his

whimsical talk with the Grave-digger the

gentleness was tinged with a sense of hu-

mour, that yet never lost the sense of

rank. After years of the usual sardonic

tone toward Folonius, Booth's Hamlet

came to recognise that, though the Lord

Chamberlain is a tedious old man, he is

also Ophelia's father. The recognition,

and the resulting access of kindness

toward Folonius, were carried very far

indeed in the newest Hamlet, last year.

Among things that Booth, in the come-

dian's phrase, ^^ left out," was some un-

necessary violence of voice and action in

certain scenes. That this tempering

process would bring gain, not loss, of

force, was to be expected 5 but the gain

74 EDWIN BOOTHat several points, notably in the scene

with Laertes at Ophelia^ s grave, was won-derful.

There lingered always, however, as I

have intimated, divers means and modesof expression that Booth might well haveleft out. More often than in any other

of his performances within my recollec-

tion, he smote his brow, tragedian fash-

ion, to signify deep thought. He ^Hookthe stage'' more often, and adopted anundue ^^ distance'' of speech and bear-

ing. And, though long before I sawBooth, he had exempted himself fromthe reproach of ^^ making statues all

over the stage," he was, perhaps, SisHam-

letf too fond of attitudes that— perfect

in their grace— had a pictorial rather

than a dramatic significance.

Quite apart from the important, never-

to-be-settled question (which he settled

in practice on the safe side for poetry),

of the middle way between the ideal andthe familiar, Booth did not make clear

EDWII^ BOOTH 75

all Hamlefs yearning for affection, which

reads itself into his talk in unexpected

places. This was of course a matter

of conception, and did not concern

Booth's method, which easily compassed

every subtlety of expression. It seems

also to my recollection that Booth, in

accord with a correct general principle

of acting, tended to slur some of the ab-

rupt changes of mood in Samlet. Mem-ory, however, after ten years and more,

may play strange tricks with details of

acting, and I may be wholly right nei-

r in this impression nor in the equally

jng feeling that Booth did not enough

iidicate SamleVs strange freakishness of

mood and manner. I!^ot that he should

have laid more stress on the pretended

madness. Too many Hamlets have been

^^ funny without being vulgar,'' in that

part of their task ; but surely, after

Hamlet first sees the Ghost, a fever of un-

rest is one of his most frequent states.

Taken together with the Prince's tre-

76 EDWIN BOOTHmendous, morbid activity of mind—which shows itself nowhere more plainly

than in his habit of exciting himself with

his own talk— this feverish temper is

likely to produce at times so much of

the excitement (dangerously approach-

ing the aberration) of mania, that an

actor who can truly represent it need be

at little pains to provide symbols of

counterfeited mania.

But, whatever many persons deemedthe faults of Booth's method, whatever

some persons deemed the defects of his

conception, the countervailing excel-

lences of the impersonation, regarded as

a whole, distinguished Booth's Hamlet

as the best that was known to the gene-

ration familiar with it. He thoroughly,

almost constitutionally, it may be said,

felt the deep essentials of the character

;

and he played it in a manner inexpress-

ibly noble. That Samlet shall be a self-

examining dreamer, loving the foreseen

order of the university, disconcerted by

EDWm BOOTH 77

the ii ... ^gular happenings of the world

;

that he shall be melancholy, first bytemperament, then from circumstance

;

that his resolve shall be too weak to

make head under the burden laid upon

a sensitive nature ;— these elements are

of the essence. And these Booth blended

and showed forth like the great artist he

was. He made us believe in the spirit-

uality of Samlet, in his kinship with the

beyond. Partridge, seeing Booth in the

first scene with the Ghost, would never

have exclaimed :— ^^ If that little manthere upon the stage is not frightened,

I never saw any man frightened in mylife.'' What Booth expressed was not

physical fear, but a solemn awe, mixed

with the passionate and pitying affection

of which the word ^^ father,'' as he

spoke it, was most eloquent. From this

scene on, a memorable trait of Booth's

Hamlet was a look he had, as if the

Ghost had never quite vanished from his

sight. When he spoke the words—

78 EDWIN BOOTH^^And, for my soul, what can i^Io to

that,

Being a thing immortal as itself?'' —his face lighted, his voice rang with the

certainty of an authentic revelation.

Yet over the whole characterisation

hung, like a dark vapour, the sense of

tragic fate. Without that, Booth well

knew, there might be the play of ^* Ham-let,'' but most of Hamlet would be left

out.

VIL

^^ Hamlet/' withdrawn from the

Winter Garden on Marcli 24, 1865, was

taken to the Boston Theatre, where

Booth was acting, when, on April

14, his younger brother killed the

President of the United States at the

national capital. Eage and grief pos-

sessed the people of the I^orth, and all

thoughtful persons throughout the South

knew that in Lincoln the South had

lost its best and most powerful friend.

Fifteen years later, in writing from Lon-

don to an old friend, of certain persons

of rank who had shown him kindness,

Booth added whimsically: ^^You see,

Fve been so accustomed to the purple-,

with kings and cardinals have I hob-

nobbed so familiarly since my boyhood,

that Fm accustomed to these honours."

But the actor of many tragedies came

all unprepared to the tragedy that must,

perforce, be acted in his own life. To

80 EDWIK BOOTHBooth, a loyal citizen, and a man of

most sensitive nature, the shock would

have been terrible enough, even if he

had had no personal connection with it.

His letters during the war to men whowere in the field, and to their friends at

home, make it plain that his country wasinexpressibly dear to him. To Mrs. Eich-

ard Gary, the widow of Captain Gary,

Booth had written, only a month before

the assassination : ' ^ Yes, our news (no

news now, though) is indeed glorious.

I amhappy in it, and glory in it, although

Southern-born. God grant the end, or

rather the beginning, is now at hand.

For when the war ceases, we shall only

have begun to live— a nation never to

be shaken again, ten times more glorious,

a million times firmer than before.'' Tocontemporaries, although we are prone

now to lose sight of the fact, the loss of

Lincoln brought not only sorrow and deep

resentment, but doubt as well concerning

the restoration of the Union. In per-

EDWII^ BOOTH 81

sonal liiiniiliation Booth did not forget

former hopes and present fears for the

country. Surely, however, he might

have been forgiven if the individual hadobliterated the state. Since the death of

Washington no calamity had so dark-

ened the land, and for the moment it

seemed as if all Booth's fame was of no

use except to enable the millions that

had seen him to recall the face of the

man whose brother, the murderer of the

wisest and best American, was being

hunted to his vile death.

In his shame and his consciousness of

the public feeling toward the assassin's

family, Booth naturally thought that he

should never act again. Months after

the awful day, he wrote to a friend, ^^I

have lost the level run of time and

events, and am living in a misf ^' Heleft the stage," says Mr. Winter, ^^and

buried himself in obscurity, and from

that retirement he would never have

emerged but for the stern necessity of

82 EDWIN BOOTHmeeting obligations incurred long before,

and only now to be met by bis active

resumption of professional industry.''

Though this was no doubt the mainmotive, others only less honourable im-

pelled him to return. On December 20,

1865, Booth wrote from Kew York to

Mrs. Cary, concerning his decision :—

^^ Sincerely, were it not for means, I

would not do so, public sympathy not-

withstanding ; but I have huge debts to

pay, a family to care for, a love for the

grand and beautiful in art, to boot, to

gratify, and hence my sudden resolve to

abandon the heavy, aching gloom of mylittle red room, where I have sat so long

chewing my heart in solitude, for the

excitement of the only trade for which

God has fitted me. '

'

Opinion had changed toward him, as

he implied in this letter ; and whatever

a welcome both loud and deep could do

to comfort him, was done when the inter-

rupted run of *^ Hamlet" was resumed

EDWIIsr BOOTH 83

at the Winter Garden on January 3,

1866. At Booth^s entrance the great

audience rose, and gave him in look andact every assurance of good-will. Cheerfollowed cheer, and on the stage flowers

fell upon flowers. Most Americans havethe English love of fair play that has

passed into a proverb, and the drop of

quick-silver which Colonel Higginson

believes to be in the blood of every

American, distinguishing him from an

Englishman, perhaps accounts for our

more demonstrative way of making our

traditional trait felt. So that everywhere,

as in New York, Booth was told with

cheers and praise that the stage and the

public needed him, and that the sins of

the guilty were not to be visited upon

his head. Thus he fell gradually into his

old mode of life and work, not forget-

ting— that would have been impos-

sible— yet not brooding selfishly over the

awful occurrence which had threatened

to destroy his hopes.

84 EDWIN BOOTH^'Eichelieu/' the next play to be re-

vived at the Winter Garden, was given

on February 1, with no less care and

liberality than had been shown in the

performances of ^^Hamlef One of

the most noteworthy *^sets'^ was a

room in the cardinal's palace at Euelle.

Arches composed the perspective, and

the moonlight, coming in through a

Gothic window, half showed, half hid,

the sombre splendour of the apartment

in which Bichelieii waited for the packet

that should put the conspirators in his

power. This representation of the play

was in large part the model for the still

more beautiful and effective one at

Booth's Theatre in 1871. At the same

time, by the way, the novel device was

tried of putting the French Court into

mourning— in act fifth— for the sup-

posed death of the cardinal.

On December 29, 1866, Booth and

Davison acted together as lago and

OthellOj with Madame Methua-Scheller

as Desdemona.

EDWIN BOOTH 85

On January 22 of tlie next year, after

a performance of ^^ Hamlet'' and in the

presence of a great company of specta-

tors, Booth received a medal that hadbeen intended to mark the hundredth

night of the play, in 1865. The gold

oval is enfolded with a gold serpent, its

head pendent. Above are the skull of

Toricky crossed foils, and bunches of

Ophelia^ s flowers. Bound the oval is a

ribbon of gold, bearing the motto,

^^Palmam qui meruit ferat.'' Overall

is the crown of Denmark, from which

hang two wreaths of laurel and myrtle.

In the centre, in high relief, is a head of

Booth as Samlet. The brooch to which

the medal is attached, shows a head of

Shakespeare between the tragic and the

comic mask. The inscription on the

reverse is : ^^To Edwin Booth : In com-

memoration of the unprecedented run

of ^ Hamlet, ' as enacted by him in 'New

York City for one hundred nights.''

But Judge FuUerton, in his address for

86 EDWIN BOOTHthe committee of presentation, was care-

ful to say:— ^^It was thougM proper

that this presentation should take place

on the occasion of the play of ^Hamlet/

with which your name will ever be

associated 5 but the choice of time and

place for this ceremony intends a recog-

nition of your life-long efforts to raise

the standard of the drama, and to cheer

you in your future endeavours. '' When

Judge Fullerton had finished speaking,

he hung the medal round Booth's neck.

Booth was in the dress of Samlet,

The presentation committee included

Major-general Eobert Anderson, Agas-

siz, George Bancroft, George William

Curtis, Charles A. Dana, and Bayard

Taylor.

The days of the Winter Garden were

numbered. On the night of March 22,

1867, Booth acted Lucius Brutus there,

and it is supposed that the fire which is

used in one scene of Payne's tragedy

communicated itself to the theatre.

EDWm BOOTH 87

Toward morning, at all events, flames

burst out below the stage, and in a few

hours destroyed the house. With it

disappeared the scenery used in ^^ Ham-let, '

' ' ^ Eichelieu, '' and '

' The Merchantof Venice '^

; Booth's stage wardrobe,

including more than one article that his

father had worn ; a large and costly col-

lection of theatre dresses, jewels, armour,

and furniture 5 many books and manu-scripts, several of the latter being impor-

tant; and portraits of Betterton, the

elder Booth, Garrick, Kean, Kemble,

Macready, Mrs. Siddons, and many an-

other player not unknown to fame.

Only the associations of the house re-

mained, but these long survived the

destruction of the fabric that had madethem possible. The bad acoustics andthe bad optics of the house had been

genially forgotten by persons who sawupon its stage the favourite performers of

their youth. And play-goers who do not

yet lag superfluous heard Jenny Lind at

8S EDWIN BOOTHthe Winter Gardeia, marvelled at Char-

lotte Cushman as Scott's Gypsy touched

to finer issues, and were swayed by the

strange, evil power, then waning, of

Eachel, the greatest actress of her time.

Those who delighted in Blake and Bur-

ton and Clarke at the Winter Garden,

remember how the Comic Spirit «vas

incarnated in them. Before the same

lamps, as Caleb Flummerm ^^The Cricket

on the Hearth,'' Jefferson discovered

new secrets in his giffc of imaginative

comedy.

VIII.

With the destruction of the WinterGarden ended Booth's first organised at-

tempt to give the best plays in the best

manner. With Booth's Theatre began a

far more ambitious and more highly or-

ganised attempt to do the same thing.

The corner-stone of the new house waslaid on the eighth day of April, 1868;

and the first performance— ^ ^ Eomeoand Juliet" it was— took place on Feb-

ruary 3 of the following year. Thebuilding, which stood on the south-east

corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth

Avenue, was of granite, and measured

one hundred and eighty-four feet in

length. One hundred and fifty feet of

this made the front of the theatre

proper, and the rest formed the width

of a wing used mainly for shops andstudios. The theatre was solidly built,

and elaborately decorated with frescoes,

statues, and busts of famous actors,

90 EDWm BOOTH /

among them Gould's well-known repre-

sentation of the elder Booth. This was

midway of the wide stone staircase lead-

ing from the south end of the lobby to

the balcony. Above the balcony was

a second balcony, and above that an^ * amphitheatre. '

' The lobby was pavedwith Italian marble. The house seated

seventeen hundred and fifty persons,

and there was standing room for three

hundred more.

Behind the curtain everything was

[done with the same liberal hand andmeasure. The footlights were fifty-five

feet from the back wall, the arch was

seventy-six feet wide, and beneath was

a pit, thirty-two feet deep, blasted out

of the solid rock, into which a scene

could be lowered out of sight. The flats

were raised and lowered by hydraulic

rams, under the stage.

The Juliet to Booth's Borneo on the

opening night was Miss Mary M' Vicker,

a step-daughter of J. H. M'Yicker, long

EDWIK BOOTH 9l)

at the head of theatrical management in

Chicago. Miss M'Yicker was a person

of energy and intelligence, who hadmuch practical knowledge of the theatre

and a slight but serviceable gift for act-

ing. Later in the year 1869 she took

permanent leave of the stage, and on

June 7, at Long Branch, was married to

Booth.

As stage lovers, from the Veronese to

the Lyonnais, were not for Booth or he

for them, we must conclude that his ex-

traordinary good looks, his repute as

an actor, a good company, and a rich

^^ production'^ in the imposing newhouse, reconciled the public to a ten

weeks' run of ^^Eomeo and Julief It

gave way on April 12 to ^^ Othello,''

Booth playing the Moor; and on May31 Edwin Adams, a popular young actor

of that day who had been the Mercutio

and the lago of the two revivals, began

a two months' round of romantic char-

acters. Mr. Jefferson, as Bip vanWinMe^

92 EDWIN BOOTHfinished the summer. Miss Kate Bate-

/ man^ Hackett— the only great Falstaff

I of the second half of the nineteenth cen-

/ tury— and Mrs. Waller, followed Mr.

Jefferson ; and only on January 5, 1870,

did Booth again appear at his own thea-

tre. This reappearance was in ^^Ham-

lef (with ^^ stage accessories'' that

were ^^fine beyond precedent"), which

ran till March 19. After Booth's Sam-lety Sir Giles Overreaeh, Claude Melnotte,

and Macbethj John S. Clarke played a

series of comic rdles— among them DeBoots and Mr. Toodle— from April 18

till May 28. During the same year Mr.

Jefferson acted Eip van WinJcle one hun-

dred and forty-nine times in succession.

In 1871 Booth gave ^^Eichelieu," with

unexampled splendour ;^* Othello," and

* ' The Fool' s Eevenge '

' ; revived ^ ' Win-ter' s Tale," with Barrett as Leontes; and

acted BenedicJc for the first time in NewYork. Barrett played James Harebell

in ^^The Man of Airlie" (taken from a

EDWIN BOOTH 93^

German piece called ^^ Laurel Tree and

Beggar's Staff'')? ^^^ ^^^^ E- Owens,

Caleb Flummer. These performances

would have been enough to distinguish

any theatre, but the year was made yet

more remarkable by Miss Cushman's re-

turn to the stage after an absence of ten

years, and by a notable revival of ^^ Ju-

lius Caesar." Miss Cushman showed un-

abated power as Queen KatJiarinej Lady

Macbeth, and Meg Merrilies,— the three

characters with which her fame is mainly

associated. '^Julius Caesar," in which

at different periods during the run

Booth played Brutus, Cassius, and An-

tony, was given eighty-five times between

Christmas Night, 1871, and March 16,

1872.

This dry enumeration, read in the

light of understanding, is a noble and

pathetic bit of history. Noble, because

it is a record of what, in the finest spirit,

a great actor tried to do for the stage,

and therefore for the country. Pathetic,

/

fk EDWIN BOOTHbecause the Mgli attempt failed. Audi-

ences, large in numbers and excellent in

quality, were seldom lacking at Booth's

Theatre ; nor did Booth's ambition and

the performance in which it took shape,

ever lack recognition and praise from the

discriminating few or the capricious

many. But the cost of the theatre hadbeen more than a million dollars, the

running expenses were enormous, andBooth had not the gift of financial man-

agement. So disaster was the result, in

spite of constant public support given to

the enterprise, and in spite of the very

large sums that Booth made on the road

and sent home to his treasury. Mr.

Aldrich has preserved the following let-

ter, which Booth wrote to him on one of

these trips.

" POBTSMOUTH, Octr. 3rd 1872.

''My dear Tom:^^Tho' centuries have flown since we

last corresponded and— for aught weknow— both of us may be dead and gone

EDWII^ BOOTH 95

— I feel as if you were close at handtoday. In this quaint old town— your

native heath, I believe— everything re-

calls the ^ Bad Boy' T. B. Esquire.— It's

raining like blazes and things in general

look blue. I hope I shall not be obliged

to call on you for aid to get away. Ofcourse you know where I am to ^ Hamlet

'

to-night— a man (thejanitor, or proprie-

tor, perhaps) tells me you went to school

just under the old Temple— it seems to

me that it must have been hundreds of

year ago.— I wish you were here to showme about the city— I am sure there is

much of curious interest here; I like

these old ^bygones' and the really excel-

lent modern hotel seems out of its element

altogether, while the Temple seems quite

at home. I bought some Brette Harte

paper collars (!) here and asked for some

ditto Aldrich cuffs, but to its shame be

itspoken the town does not contain them.

A prophet at home, you know the prov-

erb. . . .

96 EDWm BOOTHI began to write this very close think-

ing I had much to say, but you know it

/ is my habit to begin quite vigorously

/ and terminate abruptly— you may re-

member an evening at Fields' — lang

syne. All I can do now to keep up ap-

pearances is to tell you what I've been

doing since we parted. You know I

then had a fine place at Long Branch—which I transferred to my partner

(Robertson) as so much cash in buying

his interest in the theatre— he owned fof it. I owned several other pieces of

real estate, all of which he took at a very

liberal figure— and I thus got free from

a sense of restraint that annoyed me ex-

cessively. Since then the theatre has

been doing well and at present is in a

glorious way with Boucicault, while I

am off scouring the provinces for the

stray ducats that lie around loose. So

far my trip has been very pleasant in

every way— with here and there a weaktown, but the old-fashioned fun I have

EDWIN BOOTH 97

in extemporising stages and scenes com-

pensates me for the ^sparcity ' of shekels.

It reminds me very much of my early

California tramps 5 I have my own com-

pany— no rehearsals, and the travel is

done by short stages of not more than

two hours the longest.—I do wish youwere here tonight — to see me bury

Ophelia ' above board ' ; there is but a

six X six square hole, into which mylarge-legged Laertes could not leap—and so Tve ^ faked' (as we mummersstyle a make-shift) a grave above the

stage ; Ophelia's coffin, mind you, is

packed with Yorick's skull and bones,

swords, spears, etc., while we travel—this is a secret, but you're behind the

scenes.

^^Well— finding myself without a

home I bought a place at Cos Cob (go to

your map and scour Connecticut)— quite

near old Putnam's pump at Horse-neck

— from Barras, author of Blk Crook.

Here's a mingling of black spirits and

98 EDWIN BOOTHgrey for you ; Barras and Shakespeare,

Booth and Ballet, legs and legitimate!

It's a delightfal spot— a fairy spot—with every kind of pleasure close at

hand, boating, bathing, fishing and

driving at your very doorstep. I

hope— should you ever pass that way(on the Boston & New Haven E.E.)

you'll ask to be dropped at Cos-Cob

—an hour's ride from New York—and see my retreat 5 I hope to pass a

good long vacation there this next

spring and summer ....

^'I hope your dear ones are all well

and that your home is as happy as you

deserve and desire it to be, in which

pious wish Mary joins me.

^'With kisses for those twa siller

heads, and love to yourself and wife,

''Ever Yours,

''Ned."

It will be seen from this letter that

Booth, by buying out his partner, had

EDWIlsT BOOTH 99

become sole proprietor of tlie theatre.

In 1874 he failed. A detailed account

of Booth's Theatre may be found in Mr.

Winter's lAfe and Art of Edwin Booth,

Mr. Jefferson once said of his manage-

ment: ^^ Booth's theatre is conducted

as a theatre should be— like a church

behind the curtain and like a counting-

house in front of it." It is evident from

the facts, however, that the accounts

were a good deal muddled.

IX.

All, through the troubled time Booth

showed the courage, the constancy, andthe consideration for others, that were a

part of his nature. The published let-

ters to his little daughter, which begin

in 1869, are peculiarly touching. Many— most, fathers less burdened, would

have had a less intimate care for a little

girl's work and play. She must apply

herself to French, and write him another

letter all in that language 5 she should

learn to skate— he is doing so 5 he tries

to plan for their meeting. Once he

preaches a little homily drawn from his

own young experience ; and at another

writing he asks, in the very thick of his

troubles :— ^^ Don't you think it jollier

to receive silly letters sometimes than to

get a repetition of sermons on good be-

haviour? It is because I desire to en-

courage in you a vein of pleasantry,

which is most desirable in one's corre-

EDWIN BOOTH 101

spondence, as well as in conversation,

that I put aside the stern o\6. father, and

play jpa2>a now and then.'' Two of the

letters are from St. Valentine, a canary

bird, and Pip, a dog. Each is full of

spirited onomatopoeia, such as would de-

light a child, and in the originals Booth

had drawn small figures of the corre-

spondents for whom he merely ^^held

the pen.'' In the same year, the year

of the bankruptcy, he speaks out his

real mind to his friend Bispham :—

^^This is by no means the heaviest

blow my life has felt, and I shall recover

from it very shortly if my creditors have

any feeling whatever. ...

'^I gave up all that r.^^n hold dearest,

wealth and luxurious eas*i } n?oi^ do I com-

plain because that unlucky, t slip ,'twixt

the cup and lip

'

'has '^ :>pilled ^i\ ^^\tea.

^'With a continuance of the health

and popularity the good Lord has thus

far blessed me with I will pay every

102 EDWIN BOOTHSou/ and exclaim with Don Ccesar—though in a different spirit—^Tve done

great things.' If you doubt me, ask mycreditors!''

As Burke's words were things, so

Booth's became deeds. He gave up to

his creditors the whole of his private

and personal property, not excepting

what might, one conjectures, have been

fairly kept as ^^ tools of his trade,"

namely books and theatrical wardrobe.

Then, after a rest at his wife's house at

Cos-Cob (already spoken of in the letter

to Mr. Aldrich), Booth applied all his

splendid powers to the payment of his

debts. But never again did he act as his

own or £|,nyone, ease's manager.

oKe seems 'UOt even to have stipulated

,for, decent conjfiettocein supportingplay-

, ;efs or- decent oa§te and liberality in the

^* production." The ^Stars'' in per-

formances of Shakespeare to-day are not

always of the first magnitude, and the

other members of the cast would some-

EDWm BOOTH 103

times have been less unsuccessful in other

lines of life; but so well trained are

these flesh-and-blood marionettes of ours,

so gorgeous are the dolls'-clothes lavished

on their backs, so handsome is every-

thing about them, so brisk and crisp the

stage management, that no one who did

not see Madame Janauschek, Booth, andSignor Salvini— after the adoption of his

biglottic system— can be made to under-

stand what sort of background, humanand scenic, was provided for their genius.

In those years, at all events, during

which I used to see Booth often— the

years from 1878 to 1891— among the few

exceptions to the wretchedness of his

presentment were his appearances under

the direction of Lawrence Barrett, and

at the Boston Museum, where he was

assisted by a company whose general

competence had only the drawback of

a comparative inexperience in playing

Shakespeare. On most other occasions

the courts of the Plantagenets, the

104 EDWIN BOOTHDoges, and the Macbeths, were forlorn

and homesick places. Court, battle-field,

rialto, and blasted heath, were peopled

alike by the dreary, impossible theatre-

folk whom Booth himself used to call^' dogans. '

'^' Dogans, '

' pray mark, was

a class term given in humourous tolerance

to ignorant, conceited players. Of in-

dividuals Booth spoke with unvarying

kindness, treated them with the utmost

consideration, and praised them when he

could. As his assistants were by no

means all dogans, he could often give him-

self that pleasure. Perhaps all of them,

even the dejected supers—who does not

remember those Venetian senators?—would have brightened up a little if the

scenes and chairs and tables and clothes

had been better. ^^ Hamlet'' seems in

recollection the worst of all as to these

matters. I remember one piece of hag-

gard scenery held in place by the visible

hand of a shifter 5 I remember a certain

burly, Milesian Horatio ; and a fat Queen

EDWII^ BOOTH 105

that roamed about lier halls, clad, for

outer garments, in what appeared to be

a purple piano-cover bordered with gilt

paper. And alas, poor Ghost! I can

never forget one of him who, in solemnly

lifting up his arm, disclosed, through the

green gauze in which, twenty years ago,

ghosts always travelled, that he hadwisely put on a red flannel shirt before

revisiting the Danish climate. It was an

honest ghost, that let me tell you.

People complained of the untowardconditions, but, though complaining,

they went still to see the gracious person

who was so ill attended. He himself

moved about the stage, apparently un-

conscious of any lack ; always admirably

dressed for his part; letter-perfect in the

lines, and acting always with a con-

science even when he could not com-

mand his mood. Perhaps the poor sup-

port and shabby appointments enabled

Booth to make more money— there

were those who said so 5 and certainly

106 EDWIN BOOTHhis managers profited by the arrange-

ment. One calumny, however, should

be forever silenced— the charge that

Booth feared the rivalry of able players,

and preferred to shine by contrast, like

Queen Elizabeth among her ugly waiting-

maids. On the contrary, not only did

Booth in his own term of managementcall about him the best people that

money could hire, but he was always

glad to act with the greatest of his con-

temporaries. It was not a self-distrust-

ing or weakly jealous man who acted

with Salvini, Janauschek, Eistori, Cush-

man, Irving, Davison, and several other

Germans of high repute in their owncountry. With Miss Cushman Booth

once acted two weeks in different plays

;

with Mr. Irving for six weeks, alternat-

ing the parts with him in ^'Othello''

5

with Madame Modjeska during a whole

season. It was generally observed that,

the more formidable Booth's ^ ^ opposite, '

'

the better he played. As to jealousy, if

EDWm BOOTH 107

lie felt it, he was not least an actor in

Ms concealment of it. In ^Hhe profes-

sion'' he was renowned for kindness and

fair dealing, as well as for an open-

handed charity that was remarkable

even in a calling famed for generosity.

And two of the distinguished persons

with whom he played, have told me that

they found his courtesy almost unexam-

pled. He was always ready to adopt

their *^ business'' or their arrangement

of a scene. ^^ He was willing to do any-

thing except come to rehearsal."

In the fall of 1875, then (later than he

had intended, on account of a serious

accident at Cos-Cob) , Booth began his

brilliantly successful struggle to pay his

debts and to make another fortune.

From that time the outward history of

his life is little but the record of tour

after tour in the United States, varied

with two successful visits to England and

a brief professional experience in €rer-

many which was, perhaps, the highest

triumph in his forty years of acting.

108 EDWm BOOTHOn October 25, 1875— he was released

from bankruptcy in March of that year

— Booth began an engagement at Daly's

Fifth Avenue Theatre in which he

played for the first time Shakespeare's

Eichard 11. Although it had been

in Kean's repertory and in that of the

elder Booth, the character had somehowfallen out of favour on the stage, and

Edwin Booth had never seen it. Heplayed Eichard II exquisitely. Dur-

ing the same season he gave, for the first

time in New York, Shakespeare's ^^King

Lear" according to his own adaptation.

As a young man he used the old stage

version, made by Tate and modified byJohn Philip Kemble. This he gave upabout 1860, allowed himself ten years to

forget it, and then— in Chicago— with-

drew ^Hhe hook " that Kahum Tate had

put in ^^the nostrils of Leviathan," and

began to play Shakespeare's Lear.

In 1876, beginning at Baltimore Jan-

uary 3, ending at Bowling Green, March

EDWIlSr BOOTH 109

3, Booth gave fifty-two performances in

the South, under the management of

J. T. Ford. As he had not acted on the

Atlantic coast south of Baltimore since

1859, the wish to see him was very great.

People came from many miles round to

Charleston, Eichmond, and the other

towns that Booth visited. Crowds wel-

comed him at every stopping-place, and

often at way-stations the cars had to be

locked, to keep out the multitude. Leg-

islatures and ^^ society'' adapted their

hours to Booth's appearances. ^^No

actor had ever caused such excitement,

or received such a tribute, in the south-

ern country."

The next excursion was to California,

' from which Booth had long been refus-

ing offers. Xow he needed money too

much to refuse. After a journey of

twelve days from Chicago, he reached

San Francisco on September 5, twenty

years to a day from the time he had left

it. The receipts of an eight weeks' en-

110 EDWm BOOTHgagement in San Francisco were ninety-

six thousand dollars. Mrs. Clarke stat3s

that for the season beginning in "New

York in November, 1876, and ending in

Boston on May 19, 1877, Booth received

one hundred and twenty-one thousand

three hundred and fifty-three dollars.

In 1877, according to the same author-

ity, the debts were paid.

That year saw also the execution of

a long-cherished design. Booth cut andarranged fifteen of the plays in his rep-

ertory. These, with many stage direc-

tions, and introductions and notes byMr. Winter, were published under the

general title of The Frompt Book, Thefirst of the prompt books was ^^Eichard

III, '' the motley Gibber version of which

Booth had given up in 1876. The other

plays of the series are ^ ' Hamlet, ''

^ ^ Mac-

beth,'' ^^ Othello,'' ^^ King Lear," ^^Eich-

ard the Second," ^^ Henry the Eighth,"

'^Much Ado about I^othing," ^^The

Merchant of Venice," ^^ Katharine and

EDWIN BOOTH 111

PetrucMo'' (the little that Garrick left

of ^^The Taming of the Shrew"),^^Eichelieu/' ^^The FooPs Eevenge/'^^ Brutus/' ^^ Buy Bias/' and ^^DonCse-

sar de Bazan.'' Each play-book con-

tains sufficient directions for putting the

play on the stage. There is none of that

taking Shakespeare apart and putting

him together differently which makesthe Daly renderings an irritating puzzle

to those who have more than a bowingacquaintance with the text. The YoungPerson was perhaps too much considered

by Booth. For other reasons, of course,

he cut the plays freely, and when they

are cut they bleed. But Mrs. Penden-

nis, merely by practising the art to skip,

might follow a Prompt-Book perform-

ance well enough with her copy of the

dramatist ; and in this edition, as a

whole, Shakespeare is treated with such

reverence as actors and managers have

seldom paid him. It is worth noting

here as a matter of record that, in spite

112 EDWIN BOOTHof Booth's long habit of playing the

^^ restored'' text of Shakespeare, Miss

Marlowe gave her first performances of

Juliet in a version that retained the

old stage ending. This ending, how-

ever, Miss Marlowe soon abandoned.

Booth himself went back to the Gibber

Bichard for one season, or part of a sea-

son, in the last few years of his acting.

One startling incident broke into the

long years of Booth's prosperity. Hewas shot at in M'Yicker's Theatre,

Chicago, on April 23, 1879. The play

was ^^Eichard II," and suddenly, just

as Booth was speaking the prison solilo-

quy in the last act which begins,

^^ I have been studying how I maycompare

The prison where I live, unto theworld,"

a man in the first balcony fired two

pistol shots at him. ^^ Mr. Booth slowly

rose " — says an eye-witness, in The Dial

EDWm BOOTH 113

of June 16, 1893— ^^ stepped to tlie

front of tlie stage and looked inquiringly

towards the balcony. He saw the would-

be assassin, saw the pistol raised for a

third shot, turned around, and very

deliberately walked back out of sight.

In the meanwhile, his assailant was seized

from behind, and was not permitted to

pull the trigger for the third time. Whatparticularly impressed me about the

whole affair was the coolness displayed

by Mr. Booth. He was playing the part

of a king, and did not for a moment for-

sake the kingly impersonation. After

a short time, Mr. Booth reappeared,

begged the audience to excuse him for

a few moments longer, while he should

speak to his wife, finally came upon the

stage again, and finished the act."

Mark Gray was the name of the lunatic

who fired the shots. Booth had one of

the bullets mounted in a gold cartridge

cap, and had engraved upon it— ^' FromMark Gray to Edwin Booth." The

114 EDWIN BOOTHnortherly humour of the inscription is

said by his friends to have been as

characteristic of him as his courage in

the danger it commemorates. Four days

after the shooting Booth wrote to Mr.

E. C. Stedman:—^^My temporary self-

control gave way after a day or two to a

highly nervous excitement— a condition

similar to that which I believe Shake-

speare illustrates by RamleVs frivolity

after the ghost is gone, and the terrible

tension of his brain is relaxed. I have

a ghostly kind of disposition to joke

about the affair which is hardly control-

lable.'' Booth must have differed muchfrom all other true artists if this and

many another ^^ emotion remembered in

tranquillity '' did not help to vivify and,

as it were, to found his art.

Of a deeper tragedy than the moment's

peril in Chicago, was what had happenedyears before at an evening party in ITew

York. "There was another evening"— Mr. Howells tells the story in his

EDWm BOOTH 115

Literary Friends and Acquaintance—^^ There was another evening when, after

we all went into the library, something

tragical happened. Edwin Booth was

of our number, a gentle, rather silent

person in company, or with at least little

social initiative, who, as his fate would,

went up to the cast of a huge hand that

lay upon one of the shelves. ^ Whosehand is this, Lorry % ' he asked our host,

as he took it up and turned it over in

both his own hands. Graham feigned

not to hear, and Booth asked again,

^ Whose hand is thisV Then there

was nothing for Graham but to say,

^It's Lincoln's hand,' and the man for

whom it meant such unspeakable things

put it softly down without a word.''

X.

In 1880 Bootli made another visit to

Europe. He had. long intended it. Abreakfast was given him at Delmonico's

on June 15, at which many well-known

men spoke— among them Mr. Jefferson,

William Warren, Lawrence Barrett, Mr.

Whitelaw Eeid, Mr. Stedman, the Eev.

Eobert CoUyer, and Parke Godwin. Mr.

Winter read a poem. On June 30 Booth,

with his wife and daughter, sailed for

England. After a brief tarry at Strat-

ford-on-Avon and a journey through

Switzerland, in the course of which he

saw and much disliked the ^^ Passion

Play'' at Oberammergau, he returned to

England. On the evening of November

6, at the new Princess's Theatre, Booth

appeared in London as Samlet. Since

the choice of character, which was urged

by Mrs. Booth, seemed in the eyes of

many persons like a challenge to Mr.

Irving, that may have accounted for the

EDWm BOOTH 117

temperate (verging upon frigid) tone of

most of the professional critics, in such

praise as they bestowed. Booth, it must

also be remembered, thought ill of his

own performance on that occasion, and— Americans were not yet the fashion.

Many qualified judges, however, admired

the American Hamlet^ and, on the

whole, both audiences and the news-

paper press received him with honour.

When the bill was changed to '^ Eiche-

lieu,'' Booth's performance excited an

enthusiasm that the critics shared with

the public. He wrote to Mr. Aldrich

on Sunday after the first night of

^^Eichelieu,'' when he knew only the

public mind.

"Novr21'80,"St. James's Hotel

'' My dear ' T. B,'" Piccadilly.

^^The sight of your dear old fist was

like a metaphorical handshake. Since

^he receipt of your letter I've made a* double-header, ' as Samlet and BicJie-

118 EDWIN ..^OTHlieu. The former called forth a series ;

of silly articles— some for, some against;

me, but none worthy to be read twice,i

. . . All agree (even the worst fault- I

finders) that my English is perfect and\

that Tm master of blank-verse, but :

my old style of acting is out of date,\

etc. To read all the opinions wouldj

set you laughing hyena-like, for no|

two agree. . . . Bichelieu, last night, set !

the people wild. Old Eyder, who acted \

many years with Macready, played\

Joseph with me and after the play

disclosed that I had upset his idol. The\

dear old man was quite over-come by hisI

emotion and could barely speak. To-\

night we called at Lady Martin's, once:

a famous actress [Helen Faucit], now a\

nob, and at her house met several who !

were describing me when we entered.

If I have a long enough swing at these

folks Fm pretty sure to divide the cur-

rent of opinion— if I do not succeed in

turning it entirely. The actors all wel-

EDWm BOOTH 119

come me with, kindly greetings— some-

thing very unusual. The company is as

good as any in London and the best here

is far worse than those we complain of in

America. . . . Boughton has been here

twice and has seen me in both parts—Tve been too busy to visit him yet.

Dined once with Smalley and met LadyGordon, Huxley, and a nephew of

Macaulay. The first named and Maryhave exchanged calls several times, but

the rest of London is still out of town,

I'm told, still we've had a peep at

Nobbydom.'' Our passage over was like a sail up

the Hudson— so with the Channel,

which we crossed three times. Had no

occasion to hunt up ^ Galloot ' — for

when I decided to appear this fall in

London, I deferred my continental trip

and contented myself with a flying visit

(a sort of bird's-eye-view) to Ammergau;

with the Fassion Flay I was rather dis-

appointed— I could not get rid of the

120 EDWm BOOTHtheatrical effect of it, of the truly dra-

matic, or religious (of which IVe read so

much), there was very little perceptible.

I have twice written and shall telegraph

my protest against its being produced at

BooWsj for it is a subject out of place in

the play-house. Indeed I think it has

lost whatever sacred sentiment it mayhave possessed at Ammergau. The Sun-

day papers are full of kindlier notice,

(of Eichelieu) than they had last weeks

but not 'till to-morrow will I know the

verdict of the standard papers. Youknow that ^ first nights' occur on Sat-

urday here and not till Monday does a

poor devil know his fate. But the uni-

versal howls of approval that shook the

theatre last night and what I've already

heard to-day— assure me that ^I've

got 'em !

'

^ ' Did you ever use a stylographic pen 1

Don't ! I've two I'd like to lend, lose,

or give away to some ^ dearest foe '—

but the derned things cling to me and

EDWIN BOOTH 121

ink my taper tips. I can't get rid of

'em, and the worst of it is they've

spoiled my use of other pens. Kill the

first man that offers you one— especially

if he be an agent for their sale. . . .

'' Some day send me another line or two.

'Tis uncertain how long I shall remain

here, and what my future movements

will be.

^^ You see below an illustration of mystylographic abilities— ain't I smart

!

the pen I

^^ Mary and Edwina join Edwin in his

love to you all and to the two twins,

too. i i jg^^j, g^j^^ forever,

^^E. B."

On Christmas Eve Booth said in a

letter to Mr. Stedmanthat ^^Eichelieu"

had '^warmed them up," but that in

his opinion the houses would have been

quite as full if he had kept on with

122 EDWIN BOOTH^^ Hamlet.'' He wrote also that, ''out-

side of the ^res^/' he had had ''all that

one's heart could desire in the way of

courtesy and encouragement."'' Lear '

' was given with extraordinary

success on February 14, 1881. E. L.

Blanchard, a well-known and influential

critic of the time, after naming— in

The Era— several passages in which

"Booth's delivery and acting were

superb'' added, "We are disposed to

say that nothing finer of the kind has

been known upon the English stage."

Like praises came from many other

critics. Among the distinguished per-

sons who saw Booth do Lear in Lon-

don, were Dean Stanley, Charles Eeade,

and Lord Tennyson. The poet asked

the player to dine with him, and

remarked at dinner, with his island

frankness, "Most interesting, most

touching and powerful, but not a bit

like Xear."

The engagement at the Princess's

EDWII^ BOOTH 123

ended on March 26 with '^The Mer-

chant '' and ^ ^ Katharine and Petruchio. '

'

Booth now proposed to Mr. Irving to

give a number of parts in a series of

morning performances at his theatre, the

Lyceum. Mr. Irving immediately ac-

cepted the proposal, but soon suggested

that the performances should be given at

night, that ^^ Othello" should be the

only piece, and that he and Booth should

alternate the characters of Othello and

lago. This generous suggestion Booth

gladly accepted, and made his first ap-

pearance at the Lyceum on the 2d

of May, 1881. He played the Moor

;

Mr. Irving, for the first time, the

Ancient, Miss Terry was Desdemona.

The densely crowded house seemed to

contain everybody of importance then

in London, and, in spite of doubled

prices, it continued to be crowded until

June 19, when the joint performances

ended. It was a cruel stroke of fortune

that this delightful engagement, in which

124 EDWIN BOOTHeverything was done for Booth's honour

and pleasure, should have been played

under a shadow that dimmed all the

brightness. Mrs. Booth had long been

ill of a distressing malady. During the

engagement at the Princess's Booth hadwritten to a friend : — ^* Add to this [the

nightly acting of Lear] the anxiety on

Mary's account, and loss of sleep, and

you may guess how sane I am. I some-

times feel as though my brain were tot-

tering on the verge. Perhaps acting

mad every night has something to do

with it. I once read of a French actress

who went mad after a continued run

of an insane character she personated."

Now, in June, Mrs. Booth had grown so

ill that her return to America was

thought necessary. On the thirteenth

of the following November Mrs. Booth

died in New York.

After Booth's return from England he

lived in New York, and made frequent

visits to his mother, at Long Branch5

EDWIN BOOTH 125

and to old Mends. The dramatic sea-

son of 1881-82, beginning on October 3

at Booth's Theatre, he passed in Amer-ica.

On New Year's Day, 1882, Booth sent

Mr. Aldrich an odd gift, with the sub-

joined letter. Mr. Aldrich kindly al-

lows me to use his explanatory note as

preface :—

^^Mr. Booth afterward gave me a dif-

ferent version of the story. An eccen-

tric old party named Buggies invented

an instrument to imitate the crowing of

a cock— to be used in Samletj Act I,

scene 1. The imitation was so perfect

as to throw the audience into convul-

sions of laughter. After one night's

trial, Booth didn't dare to use the toy,

and the horrid thing— it was a sort of

trumpet with pneumonia— was sent to

me. No one but the inventor however,

could work it. I think that was its

only commendable feature.

^^T. B. A."

126 EDWIK BOOTH''Dear Tom,—

*^IVe concluded to dispense with the

Kok in Hamlet. Therefore I send it to

you for the edification of ye twins andthe delight of their parents— at early

dawn. This remarkable instrument will

crow you like any sucking hen, if prop-

erly manipulated ; but how that's done

I'm at a loss to tell. All that I knowabout it is that its creator, a Mr. Bug-

gies, put it to his lips and set all the

cocks acrowing, one dark night, in

[word illegible]. To aid Buggies andavenge myself on some fraternal foe (or

friend) I bought the infernal thing and

promised to use it in Hamlet as an espe-

cial advertisement for him. After the

darling came into my possession and

Buggies had vamosed I forgot the secret

of its crow, so couldn't use it to scare

my Danish daddy's shade. Then I de-

termined to bestow it on some one I

loved, some one with children, boy-chil-

dren, twins, in order to keep my mem-ory alive in the brain of their Papa.

EDWIN BOOTH 127

^'So, here it is! Aren't 'em pretty*?

^^When yon' re thirsty 'twill serve for

lager. Buggies believes his bully old

fortune is made by Booth buying his

blooming bugle !

^^Ta-ta!

^^Till time stops

^^ Yours" H. N. Y., 1882." '^ Edwin.

June 26, 1882, found Booth in Eng-

land again, beginning a second andhighly successful engagement, devoted

to ^^Eichelieu" and ^^The Fool's Ee-

venge," at the Princess's Theatre. After

this ended, on August 5, Booth went

over to Switzerland with his daughter,

and then— on September 11— began a

tour of the provinces which the illness of

Mrs. Booth had rendered impossible the

year before. In Dublin, although people

compared Booth's Samlet unfavourably

with the impersonations of Mr. Irving

and Barry Sullivan, the actor himself

128 EDWIK BOOTHwas heartily welcomed and his acting,

in general, mucli applauded. At Aber-

deen, at Dundee, and at Edinburgh,

^^the audience rose and cheered him at

the end of his performances.'' Every-

where the managers asked him to return.

In December of that year Booth wrote

to Mr. Anderson :— ^^ Saw ^ Much Ado '

—

the finest production, in every respect,

I ever saw. Terry is Beatrice herself5

Irving' s conception and treatment of the

part IBenediclc] are excellent."

On December 27 Booth left London for

Berlin, where, on January 11, 1883, he

began an engagement at the Eesidenz-

theater. This was renewed, on the

twenty-third, for twelve additional per-

formances. !N'o ^^ starring" tour was

ever more modestly made than Booth's in

Grermany, or with less help from puffs,

direct, oblique, or circumstantial. Thefirst American actor who had ever

visited Germany used none of the means

and methods of advertisement that are

EDWII^ BOOTH 129

sometimes thouglit peculiarly American.

^^In the Leipziger TageblatV^—wrote a

correspondent of tlie ISTew York Nation—^^a newspaper otherwise filled with the

gossip of the day, I found but a single

brief paragraph on Booth before his

representation of Hamlet in Leipzig on

March 19. The theatre posters of the

same date, as well as the theatre adver-

tisements in the newspapers, contained

nothing beyond the usual laconic an-

nouncement (not even in full-faced type,

as is generally the case) : Urste Gastdar-

stellung des Serrn Edwin Booth— Ham-let :— JEEerr Edwin Booth, IsTeverthe-

less, for the three evenings on which he

played in Leipzig, every seat in the

Stadttheater not occupied by the regular

subscription audience could have been

sold twice over.'' At Berlin the fact

that the Court was in mourning did not

keep Booth's engagement from being

very brilliant indeed. The enthusiasm

of the German actors was one of the

130 EDWIN BOOTHmost remarkable and most gratifying ele-

ments in Booth's success. On the stage

of the Eesidenztheater, at the close of

the Berlin engagement, a member of the

company made an address in English,

and at the same time Booth was given a

silver laurel wreath, bearing the fol-

lowing inscription :— *^To Mr. EdwinBooth, the unrivalled tragedian, in kind

remembrance of his first engagement in

Germany, January and February 1883. ''

Similar beautiful tokens he received at

Hamburg, at Bremen, and at Leipzig.

In these cities, at Hanover, and in

Vienna, there were very few opposing

voices to the consensus, critical andpopular, of approval that was both loud

and deep. In a letter from Berlin I

find Booth saying :— ^^I shall be glad

when I get through with this tour—it is terrible work, as I have mentally

to recite in English what the Germansare saying, in order to make the speeches

fit. '' In less than a month, how-

EDWIN BOOTH 131

ever, he was won over to declaring:—^^ I feel more like acting than I have felt

for years, and wish I could keep it uphere in Germany for six months at least.''

In the same letter (to Mr. Anderson,

February 18, from Hamburg) Booth

writes : — ^^The actors and actresses

weep and kiss galore, and the audience

last night formed a passage from the

lobby to my carriage till I was in and

off;yet I was nearly an hour in the the-

atre after the play (^Lear'). Havinghad a surfeit of public applause— for

it seems as though I had it through

father, being with him so long— the

most is but as little to me ; but this per-

sonal enthusiasm from actors, old and

young, is a new experience, and still

stimulates me strangely."

The significance of Booth's Germansuccess cannot easily be exaggerated. In

Germany most if not all of Shakespeare's

plays are acted; in English-speaking

countries, a beggarly few. And although,

132 EDWIN BOOTHto our thinking, German critics of

Shakespeare are often bent on proving

themselves mad, especially when they

write about ^^ Hamlet,'' German actors

of Shakespeare average to be the best in

the world, and have had among themplayers as great as Devrient and Barnay.

At least ten educated Germans under-

stand English, to one educated English-

man, or American of English race,

who understands German. Booth, then,

played in an atmosphere that is charged

with Shakespeare ; in theatres that are

stored with standards and traditions.

He was right in regarding the Germantour as the chief professional experience

of his life.

XL

Of Mr. Booth off the stage I can say

only, Tantum vidi Yirgilium. I saw himjust once in his own person, within the

next few years after his return from Ger-

many. The precise year and monthhave escaped me, but the scene was

Park Street in Boston ; the time, a very

cold and very bright winter morning.

The street lay white under the sun, and

the Common stretched white beyond.

Doubtless there were other people about.

I don't remember seeing any: I remem-

ber only that I caught sight of Booth at

some distance, coming down the hill

toward me. As he drew near, walking

slow, I watched him intently 5 and even

when we came face to face, it is to be

feared that I still gazed. There was no

harm— Mr. Booth must long before

have formed the habit of being stared at

!

And it was a reverential stare. Such

was my deep respect for him and

134 EDWIN BOOTHall lie had done, that, not knowing

then the fate of Charles Lamb's ^^ merry

Mend,'' Jem White, I came near taking

off my hat to a gentleman I had never

''met." It is a question whether, at

that moment, Booth would have per-

ceived even such an attack, for he seemed

to be looking in, not out, with the cu-

rious, introverted gaze of his own HamletLet no one suppose that his expression

was subdued to a professional melancholy,

or that he had the consciously uncon-

scious air which so often marks the

celebrity in his walks abroad. But as

he came toward me on that glittering,

bitter day— stepping lightly though not

quickly, his head a little bent and his

hands in his pockets— he looked like

Hamlet in a great-coat. I thought then

that I had never seen so sad a face, and

I have never yet beheld a sadder one.

Booth on the stage, I saw in manycharacters between 1878 and his retire-

ment in 1891:— Hamlet, Lear, Othello^

EDWIN BOOTH 135

lagOy Macbeth, Marcus Brutus, Bichard

III, ShylocJc, Benedick, FetrucMo, Bicfie-

Ueu, and Bertuccio. I saw him often as

Hamlet, often as lago; in each of the

other parts except Benedick, several

times. Bichard II he played for a few

years midway of his career, and during

the first half Borneo was in his repertory,

though he did not give it often. Cassius,

Antony, Cardinal Wolsey, and King John,

he also acted. Early characters were

Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's ^^A

l^ew Way to Pay Old Debts," BonOcesar de Bazan, Sir Edward Mortimer

in ^^The Iron Chest,'' Claude Mel-

notte, and Fescara in ^^The Apostate.''

After a long time of disuse. Booth

*^ revived" these parts for a season or

two, about eight or nine years before his

death. I never saw any of them, and

do not regret the loss of any except Sir

Giles, which, by all competent accounts.

Booth played superbly. And Sir Giles

is of course a great part— outside of

136 EDWm BOOTHShakespeare there is none greater in

English. As for Sir Edward Mortimer^

Fescaray and Brutus (another of Booth's

performances that went by me), why,

George Colman the younger, Shiel, andeven John Howard Payne, are dead

authors. Genius can galvanise but not

quicken them. As for Claude MelnoUe,

he is a lover suited to his Pauline or to

Laura Matilda ; and Booth, it has been

already said, could not do lovers, real or

unreal. Eome's Antony he played, but

Cleopatra's Antony he did not even try

to play.

As for Don Ccesar^ he belongs to com-

edy quite as much as to romance ; andcomedy was not Booth's trade, though

he had the good-will of a sinister,

unnamed muse, half-sister to Thalia.

Without her help his lago and his Bieh-

ard could not have been what they were.

But to all except blind lovers of Booth's

genius it seemed as if he kept comedy in

his repertory only to show that, like

EDWm BOOTH 137

^^Todgers'S;" lie could do it when he

chose. Whoever saw his BenedicJc, at all

events in Booth's last public years, with-

out having read ^'Much Ado,' ' would not

have made acquaintance with the true

BenedicJc, As he took away most of the

joy and all the panache from Bon Ccesar,

so he desiccated of all his mirth the

Elizabethan courtier-scholar-wit whomShakespeare chose to place in Messina.

Intellectually, the performance was full

of stimulus and entertainment, l^o one

else could speak the very difficult andoften archaic text as Booth spoke it,

with all its variety, all its sweet yet

lively rhythm. The soliloquies, which

bristle with points of danger for every-

one except a man of brains who is at the

same time an artist in speech, Booth

talked out quietly with himself andmerely allowed the audience to overhear.

One among many of these felicities was

the inimitable cadence of afterthought

with which the hearty affirmation, '^The

138 EDWIN BOOTHworld must be peopled," dropped into

the mock apology, ^^When I said I

would die a bachelor, I did not think I

should live till I were married.'' This

Benedick had charm, too, and careless

ease ; but he was a brown-tinted person-

age, who missed the essential nature of

the character— a nature that, in terms

of the wind, would be a fresh easterly

with the sun shining bright 5 or, in

terms of apples, ^* a pleasant tart." Thewar of Booth's Benedick with Beatrice

was not a ^^ merry war." He suggested

rather the compromise that Leonato, act-

ing upon a hint from Beatrice, offers her

as the right husband: ^^Half Signior

Benedick's tongue in Count John's

mouth, and half Count John's melan-

choly in Signior Benedick's face." Hewas pleasant to see and very pleasant to

hear, but he waked no laughter. His

grimly frolicsome Fetruchio, graceful and

alert as it was, had the same defect.

Yet Booth's friends delighted in his

EDWII^T BOOTH 139

inirth-provoking gift of telling good

storieSj and they often felt the presence

of that hnmour in his conversation which

shows itself occasionally in his letters.

He says somewhere in a letter that com-

edy is excellent practice for serious

actors, on the principle that those moveeasiest who have learned to dance.

It has already been said that, as an

actor of heroic parts, Booth surpassed

every rival in his own language. In

Shakespeare's four chief tragedies there

are three such characters— LeaVj Othello,

and Macbeth, Hamlet is beginning to be

recognised as a character part. Kow,tried by an absolute standard— not bythe merits of other actors— Booth's

renderings of Lear, Othello, and Macbeth,

fell short of what lovers of Shakespeare

long to see on the stage, as his Shylock,

Bichardj lago, EichelieUy and Bertuccio,

never did. And they are character

parts, all.

Booth's Macbeth, impressive, in many

140 EDWIN BOOTHof its elements, was less a unit and

therefore less satisfying than most of

his other characters of Shakespeare. Heshowed, often with startling distinct-

ness, the Macbeth of physical courage

and moral cowardice. Booth also madeclear, to a degree, the Macbeth whose re-

deeming quality is such love as he bears

his wife ; the warrior of a barbarous age

was scarcely visible ; and the triumph

of the impersonation was in Booth's in-

dication of surface sensibility, with a

bed rock of selfishness below. In this

skilful psychology and in a few single

scenes, Booth was at his best. The ban-

quet scene, in particular, was appalling,

and stood out even among his studies of

episodes in which the supernatural plays

a part. But Booth did not succeed in

leaving a vivid, unified impression of a

complex personality. It was as if he had

been attracted by separate phases of

Macbeth, instead of living with the char-

acter as he li9'd lived with his Samlet,

EDWIN^ BOOTH 141

his LeaVj or his lago. The poet whomShakespeare has incorporated with the

murderer in Macbeth, had all his dues

from the melody, variety, and imagina-

tion with which Booth spoke the verse.

If Booth's Macbeth, in comparison with

other of his achievements, was unsatisfy-

ing for vague reasons, his Lear was in-

complete for very definite reasons indeed.

All that intellect, imagination, pathos,

and a perfect command of histrionic

means could do for the character, was

present in Booth's rendering. ^Nor

would the theatricality of the first act

have been a serious objection to it

;

Shakespeare, following his original, is

theatrical there himself. A more im-

posing physique and greater tempera-

mental force were what Booth lacked for

the exhibition of the upheaval and

deracination of Learns nature. Another

modern actor had exactly the endow-

ment for this character which Booth

had not. Salvini— in words used by

142 EDWm BOOTHGeorge Henry Lewes, in his famous

little book on acting, to lay down a

general principle— Salvini had ^'the

qualities which give the force of animal

passion demanded by tragedy [by some

tragedies, Lewes might better have said],

and which cannot be represented except

by a certain animal power." As Lear,

unhappily, the Italian was poor in other

qualities ' * demanded by tragedy ^'—

namely, spirituality and imagination;

and there seemed even to be some con-

fusion in his idea of the character.

Booth and Salvini, fused, would have

given the stage such a King Lear as it

may some day see.

In Lear the honours were thus divided

between the two actors. In Othello the

balance was overwhelmingly with Sal-

vini. Whether or not his conception

was justifiable— and there are good

arguments on each side— his perform-

ance of the Moor was by far the most

moving portrayal of an heroic part that

EDWIK BOOTH 143

I ever saw. It was literally tlie '* whirl-

wind of passion'' of whicli Hamlet

speaks. Yet Salvini never lost control

of himself or the character. He rode

in the whirlwind and directed the

storm.

Although Booth, as an actor of heroic

parts of poetic tragedy, was so definitely

superior to his English-speaking contem-

poraries, it was in certain character

parts that he did himself most entire

justice. In these, of course, he hadformidable rivals, whose merits by com-

parison with his cannot be considered

here. But as Bichelieu, as Bertuccio, and

as lago, he was unapproached 5 and

these impersonations were probably his

best, with ShylocJc, Bichard Illy and

Hamlet, as a good second group. In

certain passages of Lear, Hamlet, and

other characters. Booth's genius took a

higher range of thought and imagina-

tion than can be found in Bichelieu,

or Bertuccio, or lago. His renderings

144 EDWm BOOTHof these tliree parts, however, were al-

most perfect. Exquisitely proportioned

and almost flawlessly acted, they were,

in sum and in detail, among the very

few finest achievements of the modern

stage.

Booth's years after his return from

Germany were, as lie once put it, ^^te-

diously successful.'' He revived some

old parts, but played no new ones. Hebought a house in Chestnut Street, Bos-

ton, and for a year or two he called it

home. There, on May 16, 1885, Booth's

daughter, Edwina, was married to Mr.

Ignatius Grossmann. On the seventh of

the same month, at the Academy of Music

in ^ew York, Booth had played ^^ Mac-

beth" with Eistori. During the spring

of 1886 he gave a few performances with

Salvini in 'New York, Boston, and Phila-

delphia. I remember their third act of

'' Othello " as if I had seen it last night.

It shines now in my memory as the

greatest acting I have ever seen. Cole-

ridge thought that to see Kean was like

reading Shakespeare by flashes of light-

ning. When Salvini played Othello and

Booth lago, there were no flashes because

\

146 EDWIN BOOTH]

there were no periods of darkness. It:

was like reading Shakespeare by a

mighty fire that rose and fell with the I

I)assion of the scene, and lighted a re- :

flection of itself in the face of each be-

holder.

Even more talked of than the appear-

ances with Salvini, yet far less worthy|

of note, was the ^^testimonial'' benefit

to Lester Wallack, at the Metropolitan

Opera House, on May 21, 1888. Booth

acted Hamlet and Madame Modjeska

Ophelia— an auspicious combination.

The Metropolitan, however, is muchtoo large for anything except opera and

spectacle. And in such a cast, assem-

bled for one occasion, when everybody

is somebody— John Gilbert was Folo-

nius at the Wallack benefit, Mr. Jeffer-

son and William Florence were the

Grave-diggers— what should be team-

work disintegrates itself into a dramatic

go-as-you-please. The more celebrities

in such a company, and the more cele-

EDWm BOOTH 147

brated they are^ the more the whole

thing becomes a mere oddity, a theatri-

cal curio which a man may be glad to

say he has seen, but which he is not

sorry to forget.

In 1886, Lawrence Barrett became

Booth's manager, and at the same time

directed a tour of his own. Beginning

next season, the two acted prosperously

together, except during 1889-90, until

the death of Barrett, March 20, 1891.

Although the prosperity was broken for

a little by a stroke of paralysis, on April

3, 1889, which temporarily hurt Booth's

speech, still he struggled on. In the

season of 1889-90 he and MadameModjeska appeared together in a round

of plays. As their methods harmonised,

the art of each gained from that of the

other. Indeed, during the steady de-

cline of Booth's physical powers, from

the warning stroke until the hour of his

retirement, his art won triumphs of a

new sort. His knowledge, inherited and

148 EDWIK BOOTBt

acquired, of the stage and all its devices,

was extraordinarily minute, and tlius art i

assisted waning nature in many subtle

ways. Occasional returns of strength

there were, too, when Booth would act

for a whole evening with much of his

old spirit, and with a skill that hadnever before been quite so delicately

fine.

But even his art, and will, and cour-

age, could not keep up forever man's

losing game with Death, which Huxleygrimly depicted and stanchly played.

Barrett's piteous end was apparently the

signal for Booth to drown his book and

break his staff, for, on the fourth day of

April, 1891, in '^Hamlet,'' quietly, and— as it was like him to do— without

hint of farewell, he brought his public

life to a close.

He was ^Hired of travelling,'' he said;

he had been ^ travelling all his life."

And so, for the two years of it that re-

mained, he settled himself in his own

EDWIK^ BOOTH 149

rooms at the Players' Club, the largely

planned and beautifully appointed house

with which, in 1888, he had made a

home for the homeless and ever travel-

ling profession. This great benevolence

crowned a life that was as full of benev-

olence as it was of grief and triumph.

Ko man could have been more mindful

or more wisely mindful than Booth— in

his gift of The Players— of the deep

saying that every man is a debtor to

his profession.

Booth was marked out by Fortune for

honour and despite. He felt the strange-

ness of his lot, and reflected much upon

the mysteries of life and death. Helped

by his religion, a kind of stoical Chris-

tianity, he came to some definite conclu-

sions in the face of all the mysteries.

^^ All my life,'' he wrote to Mr. Winter,

in 1886, ^^has been passed on ^picket

duty,' as it were. I have been on guard,

on the lookout for disasters— for which,

when they come, I am prepared. There-

150 EDWm BOOTHfore I have seemed, to those who do not

i

really know me, callous to the manyblows that have been dealt me. Whydo not you look at this miserable little

life, with all its ups and downs, as I

do? At the very worst, 'tis but a

scratch, a temporary ill, to be soon cured,

by that dear old doctor, Death— whogives us a life more healthful and endur-

ing than all the physicians, temporal or

spiritual, can give."

In 1888 Booth wrote to his daughter :—

^^ If there be rewards, I certainly am well

paid ; but hard schooling in life's thank-

less lessons has made me somewhat of a

philosopher, and Pve learned to take the

buffets and rewards of fortune with equal

thanks, and in suffering all to suffer— I

won't say nothing, but comparatively little,

Dick Stoddard wrote a poem called 'The

King's Bell,' which fits my case exactly

(you may have read it). He dedicated

it to Lorimer Graham, who never knewan unhappy day in his brief life, instead

EDWIN BOOTH 151

of to me, who never knew a really happyone. You mustn't suppose from this that

I'm ill in mind or body : on the contrary,

I am well enough in both ; nor am I a

pessimist. I merely wanted you to knowthat the sugar of my life is bitter-sweet

;

perhaps not more so than every man's

whose experience has been above andbelow the surface."

Hawthorne, in the last year of his life,

had a word on the same poem. He wrote

to Mr. Stoddard, after receiving from him^ ^ The King' s Bell " :— ^a sincerely

thank you for your beautiful poem,

which I have read with a great deal of

pleasure. It is such as the public had a

right to expect from what you gave us

in years gone by 5 only I wish the idea

had not been so sad. I think Felix

might have rung the bell once in his life-

time, and again at the moment of death.

Yet you may be right. I have been a

happy man, and yet I do not rememberany one moment of such happy conspir-

152 EDWm BOOTH\

ing circumstances, that I could have rungj

ajoy-bell for ifHere are two Americans, at least, our !

greatest man of letters and our greatestj

actor, who have proved by comment on|

the same text that they are not open to i

the charge of unreasoning optimism so '\

often brought against us. Since both i

expressions of Booth's philosophy were

written before his attack of dangerous

illness, in a time of unbroken success,

and long after his bitterest experiences,\

they may be accepted as deliberate\

statements of his attitude toward life.

But, whatever his general attitude and

view, he gave no sign, even toward the

end, of feeling poignantly the separate

pang of the actor's lot. Booth's case,|

he must have known, was that of the

dying painter before whose eyes all his

pictures and all copies of them should be

torn in shreds; of the dying sculptor

whose statues and all casts of them should i

be hammered to bits ; of the writer,

EDWIN BOOTH 153

who, in his last days, should look upona bonfire of all his books and all means

of reproducing them. Booth knew that

his LearJand Samlet, and the rest, would

go down into the grave before him, and

that the spiritual body of his art would

crumble before his natural body. Yet,

however much he felt the pity of his

fate— and he must have felt it so far as

the absence of all vanity or littleness

would let him— there is no record to

show that he lamented it.

Nor was there anything of the awful

gloom and vacancy of spirit that cameto Garrick, or of Mrs. Siddons's forlorn

repetition— ^^This is the time I used to

be thinking of going to the theatre;

first came the pleasure of dressing for

my part, and then the pleasure of acting

it ; but that is all over now." Instead,

Booth looked back, not uncheerfully,

over the long road that had led him fromThe Cabin and The Farm to the beauti-

ful house of The Players. His thoughts

154 EDWIN BOOTHturned often to his father and to religion.

He spoke of actors, living and dead ; of

remarkable and comic happenings in his

own career ; of his German tour ; of his

friejids. He took pleasure in the club,

and in seeing the members of his family.

His little grandchildren were a particu-

lar delight to him. To them, indeed.

Booth's ^4ast coherent words were ad-

dressed." ^^My boy,'' Mrs. Grossmann

writes, ^^ called gently, ^How are you,

dear grandpa?' and the answer cameloud and clear, in the familiar, boyish

way, ^How are you yourself, old fel-

lowr ''

^^ As he lay dying ''— says Mrs. Gross-

mann— ^^unconscious even of my pres-

ence, or of the fearful electric storm

which was raging without, on that sad

afternoon of the sixth of June, a glory

seemed to rest upon his loved features,

and I felt, in spite of heart-breaking

grief, that he was at peace. And whenthe dark curtain of night had fallen,

EDWIN BOOTH 155

and the storm had ceased without, and

we sat watching and waiting for what

we knew had to come we were startled

by the sudden going out of all the

electric lights in the chamber and in

the street beneath. Was such dark-

ness ever felt before 1 Alas ! not for

me.''

Edwin Booth died at the Players'

Club, a little after one o'clock on the

morning of June 7, 1893. On the

ninth, just before sunset, he was buried

at Mount Auburn, beside the wife of his

youth.

He was a great actor, a good Christian,

a brave and much-tried man.

SAEGENT'S POETEAIT OF EDWINj

BOOTH AT ^^THE PLAYEES.'' I

That face which no man ever saw

And from his memory banished quite,

With eyes in which are Hamlet's aweAnd Cardinal Eichelieu's subtle light,

Looks from this frame. A master' s handHas set the master-player here,

In the fair temple that he planned

Kot for himself. To us most dear

This image of him ! ^^It was thus

He looked ; such pallor touched his

cheek

;

With that same grace he greeted us—Nay, 'tis the man, could it but speak !

"

Sad words that shall be said some day—Far fall the day ! O cruel Time,

Whose breath sweeps mortal things away,

Spare long this image of his prime.

That others standing in the place

Where, save as ghosts, we come no more,

May know what sweet majestic face

The gentle Prince of Players wore !

Thomas Bailey Aldrice

BIBLIOGEAPHY.

For Bootli's own contributions to the

literature of the drama the reader mayturn to the fifteen volumes of Prompt-

Books, containing his stage versions of

^'Hamlet/' ^^King Lear" and manyother plays, edited, with notes andstage directions, by William Winter

(New York, 1878 : Francis Hart & Co.);

to the third volume of Actors and Act-

resses of Great Britain and the United

States, edited by Laurence Hutton andBrander Matthews (New York, 1886:

Cassell & Co., 5 vols.), and containing

papers on Kean and Junius Brutus

Booth by Edwin Booth ; and to the

notes contributed by Booth to Dr.

Horace Howard Furness's VariorumEditions of '^Othello'' and ^^The Mer-

chant of Venice '' (Philadelphia: J. B.

Lippincott Co.).

Of the writings about Booth the fol-

lowing may be mentioned

:

158 BIBLIOGEAPHYI. The Elder and the YoungerBooth. By Asia Booth Clarke. Ameri-

can Actor Series. (Boston, 1882 : James

E. Osgood & Co.)

II. The Atlantic Monthly, September,

1893. '' Edwin Booth. ' ' By Henry A.

Clapp.

III. The Century Magazine. Novemberand December, 1893. ^^ Memories and

Letters of Edwin Booth.'' By WiUiamBispham.

IV. Edwin Booth. By Laurence

Hutton. Black and White Series.

(New York, 1893 : Harper & Brothers.)

Y. Shadows of the Stage. ByWilliam Winter. Articles in the Sec-

ond and Third Series. (New York,

1893-95 : The MacmiUan Co.)

YI. LiEE AND Art of Edwin Booth.

By WiUiam Winter. (New York, 1893 :

The Macmillan Co. Eevised edition,

1894.)

I BIBLIOGEAPHY 159

VII. Edwin Booth. EecoUections byhis Daughter, and Letters to Her and to

His Friends. By Edwina Booth Gross-

mann. Q^ew York, 1894 : The Century

Co.)

The beacon BIOGRAPHIES.M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor.

The aim of this series is to furnish brief, read-

able, and authentic accounts of the lives of those

Americans whose personalities have impressed

themselves most deeply on the character and

history of their country. On account of the

length of the more formal lives, often running

into large volumes, the average busy man and

woman have not the time or hardly the inclina-

tion to acquaint themselves with American bi-

ography. In the present series everything that

such a reader would ordinarily care to know is

given by writers of special competence, who

possess in full measure the best contemporary

point of view. Each volume is equipped with

a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important

dates, and a brief bibliography for further read-

ing. Finally, the volumes are printed in a form

convenient for reading and for carrying handily

in the pocket.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers.

Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston.

[over"]

The beacon BIOGRAPHIES

The following volumes are issued:—Louis Agassiz, by Alice Bache Gould.

Edwin Booth, by Charles Townsend Copeland.

Phillips Brooks, by M. A. DeWolfe Howe.

John Brown, by Joseph Edgar Chamberlin.

Aaron Burr, by Henry Childs Merwin.

James Fenimore Cooper, by W. B. Shubrick Clymer.

Stephen Decatur, by Cyrus Townsend Brady.

Frederick Douglass, by Charles W. Chesnutt.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Frank B. Sanborn.

David G. Farragut, by James Barnes.

Ulysses S. Grant, by Owen Wister.

Alexander Hamilton, by James Schouler.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Mrs. James T. Fields.

Father Hecker, by Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr.

Sam Houston, by Sarah Barnwell Elliott.** Stonewall " Jackson, by Carl Hovey.

Thomas Jefferson, by Thomas E. Watson.

Robert E. Lee, by William P. Trent.

Henry W. Longfellow, by George Rice Carpenter.

James Russell Lowell, by Edward Everett Hale, Jr.

Samuel F. B. Morse, by John Trowbridge.

Thomas Paine, by Ellery Sedgwick.

Daniel Webster, by Norman Hapgood.

John Greenleaf Whittier, by Richard Burton.

The following are among those in preparation:—John Jacob Astor, by Arthur Astor Carey.

John James Audubon, by John Burroughs.

Benjamin Franklin, by Lindsay Swift.

THE WESTMINSTER BIOG-RAPHIES.

The Westminster Biographies arc uniform in plan,

size, and general make-up with the Beacon Biographies,

the point of important difference lying in the fact that

they deal with the lives of eminent Englishmen instead

of eminent Americans. They are bound in limp red cloth,

are gilt-topped, and have a cover design and a vignette title-

page by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Like the Beacon

Biographies^ each volume has a frontispiece portrait, a

photogravure, a calendar of dates, and a bibliography for

further reading.

The following volumes are issued:—Robert Browning, by Arthur Waugh.

Daniel Defoe, by Wilfred Whitten.

Adam Duncan (Lord Camperdown), by H. W. Wilson.

George Eliot, by Clara Thomson.

Cardinal Newman, by A. R. Waller.

John Wesley, by Frank Banfield.

Many others are in preparation.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers,

Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston.

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